Sierra Leone
Entrepreneur, Poet, Wholistic Urban Creative Arts & Theatre
Poet, producer, activist, educator, and entrepreneur Sierra Leone captivates audiences with her unassuming ingenuity, profound insight, and comedic sense of “knowing.”
A Governor’s Award winner and writer, Sierra is the president and artistic director of OFP Theatre and Production Company. For more than a decade, Ohio has benefited from Sierra’s vision of creative urban arts as a powerful artistic medium to bring communities together across racial, cultural, ideological, and economic divides. Her project “The Signature: A Poetic Medley Show” presents a hybrid of urban poetry, music, dance, and visual arts from local, regional, and international talent.…
Ray McNiece
Theatre, Performance Poetry & Storytelling
Ray McNiece is the author of eight books of poems and monologues, most recently Breath Burns Away, New Haiku. He has created two solo theatre works: Dis – Voices From a Shelter and Us? Talking Across America; two music/poetry collaborations: “Mouth Music” and “A Rust bowl Hootenanny;” and an autobiography on stage: The Lives of A Poet. The Orlando Sentinel reporting on Ray’s solo show at the Fringe Festival called him “a modern day descendant of Woody Guthrie. He has a way with words and a wry sense of humor.” In a review of Us?…
Fariha Tayyab
Storytelling, Creative writing, & Photography
Fariha Tayyab is a multidisciplinary artist hailing from Houston. As a writer and photographer, she often identifies as a storyteller who uses her creative writing and documentary photography to create and share narratives with others.
After completing her Creative Writing degree from the U. of Houston, Fariha pursued a teaching license and has been practicing both her art and teaching for more than a decade. She has worked with elementary and high school students of all backgrounds in three states and three countries. In her early teaching years, she set up an E.S.L.…
