|
Trapeta B. Mayson was Poet Laureate of Philadelphia in 2020-21. The Academy of American Poets features her profile at poets.org: "Trapeta B. Mayson was born in Liberia. Her family immigrated to the United States when she was a young girl, and she was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 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 (Liberian Girl Publishing Company), and the chapbook She Was Once Herself (2012), 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 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grantee, among others. In addition to her poetry work, Mayson is a licensed clinical social worker and Chief Program Officer at a community mental health agency in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is a member of the Greene Street Artist Cooperative and is the 2020-2021 City of Philadelphia Poet Laureate. In 2021, she received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship."
Her "Kindness Lives Here" #PAKindnessPoem is featured on Facebook and YouTube, or read it here. The 2021 Kindness Poem Project was sponsored by the Pennsylvania Humanities Council, an independent partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities and part of a network of 56 state humanities councils that spans the nation and U.S. jurisdictions.
She is the first MBA to hold the cultural role of Poet Laureate of Philadelphia. Read more in Villanova Business School's alumni magazine.
| 
