For our nineteenth episode, poet LeTonia Jones shares two writing prompts that will help you write more mindfully.

She also discusses her initial reluctance to call herself a poet. “The sooner you claim it, that it is true about you, the better it is for all of us,” she says. “Our words are medicine, and we never know when we have just the medicine that somebody else needs.”

About LeTonia Jones

LeTonia Jones is a Kentuckian who has used the alchemy of arts and activism for over 25 years. She’s led public arts campaigns and projects to center the lived experiences of marginalized people. Her purpose is to stir emotions, facilitate space for insight, and move individuals and communities toward greater acts of care and love.

In 2007, she collaborated with author and award-winning playwright Eve Ensler to pilot a two-week arts and activism festival and campaign to end violence against women and girls in Kentucky. In 2009, she co-created a writing group for incarcerated women called SwallowTale Project. In 2020, LeTonia co-founded Bloodroot Ink, a writing collective for BIPOC Womyn.

Black Girl at the Intersection is Jones’ debut book and introduces her as a poet who believes acts of witnessing and of being witnessed are revolutionary.