Juanita Kirton

Dr. Juanita Kirton’s work explores memory, survival, and liberation. As a Black, queer elder, she writes from personal and collective history, using poetry to witness, heal, and transform. Her voice is grounded in lived experience and shaped by trauma, resilience, and the ongoing work of self-definition.

​

Juanita sees writing as a communal act. Through her work as a trauma facilitator with Warrior Writers, she has witnessed how language can create space for truth-telling, connection, and restoration. That insight carries into her own creative practice, where each poem becomes both an offering and an excavation of silence, harm, joy, and possibility.

​

Movement is central to her process. Traveling across the United States by motorcycle is both a personal ritual and a creative practice. The road teaches impermanence, solitude, and connection, sharpening her attention and reminding her that storytelling, like travel, is a way of navigating inner and outer landscapes.

Juanita’s work resists erasure and insists on presence. It honors the complexity of identity without being confined by it. Ultimately, she writes to stay awake—to herself, her communities, and the world as it is and as it might become.