Born and raised in Chicago, storyteller Steven Antoine Willis uses his poetic and theatrical background to embark on the daunting task of creatively articulating African American culture. With art heavily influenced by urban life and religion, Steven mixes elements of hip hop poetics and theatrical performance with formal teachings of anthropology, and political theory to help express his eclectic personal narrative. Willis is a contributing writer to the Breakbeat Poets Anthology, NYU's National Council for Teachers of English Journal, and is a 3-time Individual World Poetry Slam Finalist. Willis received his MFA in Acting from theUniversity of Iowa in 2021 and the Iowa Writers Workshop for Poetry in 2023. His first full poetry collection A Peculiar People was released in 2022 through Button Poetry.