Trapeta Mayson

Poet, community arts practitioner, founder of the Healing Verse Poetry Line and co-administrator of “ConsenSIS” a year long project to survey, gather, and memorialize Black women poets in Philadelphia and the surrounding areas. Mayson was born in Liberia and raised in North Philadelphia and Germantown. She earned her BA in Political Science and Master’s Degrees in Social Services and Business from Bryn Mawr Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research and Villanova University School of Business respectively. The author of two self-published poetry collections, Mocha Melodies and She Was Once Herself, Mayson also released the music and poetry projects SCAT and This Is How We Get Through, in collaboration with jazz guitarist Monnette Sudler. A Cave Canem, Pew, and Aspen Words fellow, she was awarded a Leeway Transformation Award and is a Pennsylvanian Council on the Arts grantee. Mayson is a licensed clinical social worker and Chief Operating Officer at a community mental health agency in Kensington. Other notable community based projects include residencies and collaborations with the Philadelphia Water Department, Philadelphia Mural Arts, Jefferson University Humanities, and community venues, schools, and institutions. She is a member of the Greene Street Artist Cooperative in Germantown and was the 2020-2021 City of Philadelphia Poet Laureate. In 2021, she received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship.