Unique Mical Robinson 05F

Unique Mical Robinson is a writer/performer, professor, and proud Baltimore, Maryland native. She received her M.F.A. in English from Mills College, and a B.A. in creative writing/Black studies from Hampshire College. As an artist, she has performed poetry since her teens, individually and with collectives throughout the U.S. and Havana, Cuba. Prior to working in the sphere of arts education, Unique worked in a number of activist circles and direct action campaigns, including increasing funding for Baltimore City Schools in her youth, reproductive justice, affordable housing for people with HIV/AIDS, and ending police harassment, as a Community Organizer for VOCAL-NY in Brooklyn, NY, increasing mass visibility of intersectional QT/BIPOC issues, and providing academic mentorship for youth in Oakland, California. As an educator, she has served in teaching artist and leadership roles for Baltimore nonprofits, and received the Emerging Teaching Artist award from Arts Every Day in 2017.

She is the co-founder of blkottonkandy (pron. "black cotton candy"), an arts and wellness initiative, which received the Grit Fund Grant in 2019. She has released two books: the chapbook, flicked/forgotten/FREED (2014), and a full-length poetic memoir, Four Wings & A Prayer: A Charm City Churn (2014). as well as musical projects: blkottonkandy's debut EP, vesica piscis (2019), and Tha 27th Letter, Vol. I & II in 2019 & 2020 respectively (as kLefta*maniak). Currently, she is humanistic studies faculty at Maryland Institute College of Art and remains a poetry & theater teaching artist with K-12 Baltimore city school students.

Unique shares advice for young writers...