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’. Her poetic memoir "The C Word", a raw and vidid book about her life experiences has been described as a brilliant transformative work of art that has brought healing to readers across the world. She was the recipient of the 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 creatives/curators 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 The Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, RamsHead Live, The Baltimore Convention Center, The Baltimore Soundstage, American Visionary Arts Museum, Walters Arts Museum, Baltimore Book Festival, Afram, 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, music and community events for the Baltimore community over the last couple of decades including the WordWar poetry slams, Baltimore Crown Awards, Baltimore Townhall Meetings, Terrell Talks, Various Live Band Open Mics, The Movement, The Baltimore Ball, Hip Hop Is, Rap God, Track Meet Producer Beat Battles, Beat God, The Masters, Lyricism Battles, You Should Be Famous Talent Shows,Song Battles, Feature MC Battles, Comedy Shows, Phenomenal Women, Safe Spac,The Baltimore Protest Challenge, Black to The Future, The Black Mall, Reading as Activism, and Open Book and was co-curator of Art Rising, Networking 101: The Art of Hustle event at The Ottobar and on the team for Charm City Slam. She currently organizes monthly community art events and marketplaces. Additionally, she serves as the program director and teacher of various programs that mentors, coaches, empowers and educates youth poets and youth artists.

She was selected as one of Baltmore's most inspiring stories via Voyage Magazine, named one of Baltimore's powerful women of Entertainment in VVC magazine, recognized as a woman of power with emedia, named as one of the women leading Baltimore's Hip Hop scene in Baltimore City Paper, was the artist/activist of the year with DMV stand out awards. She was featured as a 2022 community champion on WBAL news and was a recipient of the 2022 weaver award bestowed upon leaders who bring communities together and named as a Baltimore Legacy Icon during Black History Month via Jack Daniels and TFP Entertainment. She was awarded for outstanding service to E. Baltimore through the E. Baltimore historical society and featured as an artist and curator on Enoch Pratt Library's series highlighting Baltimore Leaders, Gayle Danley's podcast celebrating poetry educators, 90.3 FM, 88.9 FM, Fox 45, 98 Rock, Hooligan Express and various podcasts and media outlets. One of her favorite Baltimore moments was bringing together 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