Season 1, Episode 4: Akwi Nji

Dan Sterenchuk and Tommy Estlund are honored to have as our guest, Akwi Nji, from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Akwi Nji is a spoken word artist, freelance writer, actor, and a licensed realtor with Coldwell Banker Hedges Realty. She is also the Founder and Executive Director of The Hook, a nonprofit organization which uses various forms of writing and spoken word to build community and promote creativity, literacy, and inclusivity.

Akwi was born in Iowa City, Iowa, and raised in Cameroon, Africa, for the first nine years of her life. After these unique and formative years in Cameroon, she moved with her family to Springville, Iowa, and then, eventually, to Cedar Rapids. Her experiences as a Cameroonian, a Cameroonian-American in small-town Iowa, and a bi-racial teenager in the most ethnically diverse school in the city all provided an eclectic foundation for her early writing. As a spoken word artist, she performs and conducts writing workshops throughout the Midwest.

Akwi ranks in the top 15% of Coldwell Realtors worldwide, received the 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy for Scholastic and Personal Success, has been awarded an 2016 Artist Fellowship through the Iowa Arts Council for her work as a spoken word artist, and was recently named one of the 2016 Corridor Business Journal’s Forty Under 40. Visit www.thehook.co for more information on The Hook, and www.akwinji.org to inquire about her availability for performance and workshops.

The Curiosity Hour Podcast is hosted and produced by Dan Sterenchuk and Tommy Estlund.

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Disclaimers: The views and opinions expressed by the guests on this podcast are solely those of the guest(s). These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of The Curiosity Hour Podcast. This podcast may contain explicit language.

Notes:

The brief music at the beginning and end of the podcast is the track, "Trail" on the album "Trail EP" by Nobara Hayakawa. We are using under creative commons license. The artist/publisher does not endorse or approve any of the content of this podcast.

freemusicarchive.org/music/Nobara_Hayakawa/