Black Poets Matter

Lisa Willis and Nonye Brown-West visit friends and discuss the banning of Amanda Gorman’s poem, Supporting black poetry, and advocating for black art with host Marina Franklin.

Lisa Willis serves as the Executive Director of Cave Canem. She is a passionate artistic administrator with 20 years of experience managing multi-disciplinary projects in the non-profit and commercial arts sectors. She has held various consulting and management roles in development, programming, and operations for New York Live Arts, home of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, Contemporaneous, Thresh, Heidi Latsky Dance, Brian Sanders’ JUNK, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, the Mann, and JazzReach. In 2020 she co-founded The LynList, a curated listserv and grant writing support service for NYC area individual artists and small non-profit arts groups.

Prior to her shift into fundraising, she was the founding Operations Manager for CAMI Music, establishing and managing its daily administrative protocols in addition to overseeing the touring and managerial logistics for Lang Lang, Tan Dun, Savion Glover, American Ballet Theatre, Cirque Eloize, and the Ballet Folklórico de México de Amalia Hernández. Lisa holds a B.A. in Music Composition and Theory from New York University and a background of training in ballet and modern dance.

Nonye Brown-West is a New York-based Nigerian-American comedian and writer. She has been featured in the Boston Globe’s Rise column as a Comic to Watch, as well as in NPR, PBS, ABC, Sway In The Morning, and the New York Comedy Festival. Nonye made her acting debut in The Sympathy Card, now available for streaming on Vudu, Apple, Amazon, and Google Play.

Always hosted by Marina Franklin – One Hour Comedy Special: Single Black Female ( Amazon Prime, CW Network), TBS’s The Last O.G, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Hysterical on FX, The Movie Trainwreck, Louie Season V, The Jim Gaffigan Show, Conan O’Brien, Stephen Colbert, HBO’s Crashing, and The Breaks with Michelle Wolf.