Founder/Director

Chin-yer is a multi-award winning poet, fiction writer, essayist and musician. She is the author of the poetry book Black Fairy Tales that D. Watkins described as being exactly what the genre needs to get writers excited about poetry. She is a two time recipient of the prestigious Adele V. Holden creative writing prize:award ; awarded to a writer who ‘demonstrates an understanding of craft, distinct literary vision and voice’. She was also the recipient of the Academic Excellence award in Adolescent Fiction. Her work has been featured in print in Poets Choice, Urbanite Magazine, African Voices, The Femme: Literati Mixtape Anthology Collection of Art and Poetry by Black and Brown Women creatives as well as other publications.

Chin-yer is proud mother of two prominent writers/poet/artists in Baltimore and DC's scene Soul and Lovey and serves as poetry mentor, “poetry mother” and a writing coach to many youth writers and youth students including Baltimore City’s two time international winning Poetry Youth Team and has served as the director of the Maya Baraka Writers Program for several years which teaches writing to 45-60 youth as well as program director of B.A.A.C.E.-youth empowerment program and director of D.A.A.P. art/activism program for youth-creating curriculum and leading lessons and workshop for transformational change and she is currently a teaching artist for various programs teaching poetry writing, creative writing, songwriting, and music.

Recently, Chin-yer was selected by African Voices to give a poetic tribute to legendary artist Ntozake Shange alongside Nikki Giovanni and Haki Madhubuti. Chin-yer has received her BA in literature and language arts at Morgan State University and has completed all of her course work for her creative writing masters degree, also at Morgan. In addition to writing, Chin-yer is a musician and lead vocalist of several rock bands and is the champion of Mustang’s Battle of The Bands competition as songwriter, vocalist and live performer and has performed at various venues over the last few decades as a poet and musician including RamsHead Live, Baltimore Soundstage, American Visionary Arts Museum, Walters Arts Museume, Baltimore Book Festival, African Heritage Festival, Baltimore Theatre Project, Nowchild Soundstage, The Eubie Blake Center and countless others and has been the feature artist at most of Baltimore/DC art scene’s staples over the decades including Busboys and Poets, Acoustic Thursdays, Poets for Dinner, Slammegeddon, Organic Soul Tuesdays, The Art of Conversation, Be Free Friday’s, Judah's Jukejoint, Warm Wednesdays, to name a few.

As an art curator and founder and director of ‘The Baltimore Scene’, Chin-yer has organized, promoted and sponsored hundreds of large literary and music events for the Baltimore community including the WordWar poetry slams, Baltimore Crown Awards, The Movement, The Baltimore Ball, Hip Hop Is, Rap God, Track Meet Producer Beat Battles, The Masters, Lyricism Battles, Talent Shows, Comedy Shows, Social Events, and the Baltimore Protest Challenge and was co-curator of Art Rising and is a cocurator of Networking 101: The Art of Hustle event at The Ottobar and more. She currently hosts monthly Safe Space meetings for women and writing workshops and is the co founder of two book clubs- the Reading As Activism Bookclub and a bookclub focusing on wellness and inner growth that she co hosts monthly as well. Additionally, she serves as the program director and teacher of various programs that mentors, coaches, empowers and educates youth poets and youth artists.
One of her favorite Baltimore moments was bringing toether The Baltimore Scene to build a school library of thousands of books for Baltimore youth and she is excited to give herself to develop, support, build, and serve Baltimore in all the ways that she can.

@chinyer/@thebaltimorescene on IG--www.facebook.com/chinyer--@chinyer on twitter--@chin_yer on tiktok