Author Bio

Monica attended Georgia College & State University (GCSU) to pursue her Master's in Fine Arts (M.F.A.) in creative writing, with a focus in poetry. In Milledgeville, she advised GCSU's D.N.S.T.P. chapter (Do Not Stop The Progress) of the nonprofit arts activism organization, Art as an Agent for Change (A.A.C.). Her work with the organization focused on using performance poetry as a tool for social justice. 

For two years, she facilitated and taught the Early College Writers in the Schools program, a creative writing endeavor that matched GCSU undergraduates with Early College seventh graders to teach them creative writing. 

The work with Early College gave Monica access to the Houston-based WITS program, and from 2014-2017, she taught creative writing and slam poetry in the annual summer Creative Writing Camp sponsored by WITS-Houston and Rice University's School Literacy & Culture department. 

As for her graduate work, Monica wrote, directed, and produced her graduate thesis project, Something to Keep Me Vertical, a choreopoem focused on millennial love, sex, and relationships. The show premiered at GCSU in February 2015, and later toured at South Georgia State College in April 2015. Monica successfully defended her thesis and graduated in May 2015.

Photo credit: Sara Stephens

Following her graduation from Georgia College, Monica moved back to Denver, CO, to work in a bar. The extra time allowed her to attend the Maribar Writers Colony at Cricket Hill in October 2015. In 2016, she started teaching English Composition at Metropolitan State University at Denver, tutoring writing at Community College of Aurora, teaching creative writing to high school seniors at Fairview High School in Boulder, CO, writing book reviews and editing manuscripts for Aquarius Press, and writing book reviews and culture rants for the Santa Fe Writers Project (SFWP) Quarterly. These five jobs allowed her to stop working in the bar and focus entirely on writing and publishing. 

In 2017, Monica became the Creative Writing Fellow in Poetry at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania for 2017-2018, where she taught and wrote.

During that academic year, Monica completed her third choreopoem, How to Exterminate the Black Woman, which premiered as a staged reading as part of the Women's International Voices Theatre Festival at the Vintage Theatre in Colorado. She also took over as the managing editor of SFWP.

Thanks to the sold-out performances of her choreopoem, How to Exterminate the Black Woman in April 2018 (and her excessive service and high-quality teaching and not at all due to her extravagant sense of self), Susquehanna University offered Monica a tenure-track position in the English & Creative Writing Department as an Assistant Professor of Activist and Performance Writing in fall of 2018. In 2019, she wrote and directed her fourth choreopoem, Roadmap, on campus, enabling her to create a course she exclusively teaches called The Choreopoem. In fall of 2022, she was appointed the Director of Africana Studies, working to support the program's development from a minor to a major, and took on the role as Diversity Advocate in Residence for the Sigmund Weis School of Business, seeking to support diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the school. 

Photo credit: Jared Westhoff