UC Women's Center hosts Black Feminist Symposium series throughout February

This year's keynote speaker Manon Voice is a poet, writer, spoken word artist, hip-hop emcee, educator, social justice advocate and practicing contemplative. The Indianapolis native has performed on diverse stages across the country in the power of word and song and has taught and facilitated art and poetry workshops, working with organizations such as Women Writing for (a) Change, Arts for Learning Indiana, Notre Dame Americorps, Regeneration Indy, Indiana’s WomIN’s Festival, Indiana Writer's Center, and Purdue University. She has been a featured poet and performer in noteworthy Indianapolis productions, such as “The Wake”, “Village Voices Notes from a Griot” and “Nina High Priestess of Soul” with the Phoenix Rising Dance Company. Manon Voice has performed alongside Broadway singer and actress Jennifer Holliday for Brothers United World AIDS Day, Indiana Poet Laureate Adrian Matejka, artist and songstress Opal Staples, International poet and philosopher David Whyte, and has opened for acts such as WNBA Championship basketball player Tamika Catchings and Judge Joe Mathis.

Her poetry has appeared in The Flying Island, The Indianapolis Review, The House Life Project: People + Property Series, Sidepiece Magazine and The World We Live(d) In anthology. She has been interviewed and featured in publications such as Indy NUVO, The Indianapolis Recorder, The Indianapolis Star, FAFCollective and Pattern Magazine. She has been a panelist for Indianapolis based organizations, Indy10 Black Lives Matter, Don’t Sleep, Circles Indy, IUPUI’s Social Justice Symposium and national organizations such as La Raza for Liberation focusing on the intersections of race, gender, art and activism.

 In 2017, Manon Voice was awarded the Power of Peace Award from the Peace Learning Center of Central Indiana. In 2018, she traveled to Avila, Spain with Mystic Soul to study contemplative practices through the lens of Saint and Mystic Teresa de Avila. Manon received a nomination for the Pushcart Prize in Poetry that same year. In 2020, Manon Voice was nominated as one of the four featured Art and Soul African American Artists with the Arts Council of Indianapolis. Manon Voice is also a recipient of the 2020 Robert D. Beckmann Jr., Emerging Artist Fellowship from the Arts Council of Indianapolis and was commissioned to create a poem for the Art Council’s equity statement. She is also a cohort for the 2021 On Ramp Accelerator Program with the Indiana Arts Commision and was a selected participant in the 2020 cohort for the Religion, Spirituality and Arts Program through IUPUI. Manon Voice seeks to use her art and activism to create a communal space where dialogue, transformation, discovery and inspiration can occur.