Angela Wright began writing poetry at the age of fifteen, using it as a way to
explore the world around her. The biggest influence on her poetry has been her
training as a historian, both at the undergraduate and graduate level. Her poems
often transcend temporal boundaries and demonstrate that, because of the
fluidity of time, events do not occur in a vacuum but rather reverberate across
generations.

For Staging Histories, Angela will perform a collection of poems that explores the
often-tenuous experience of people of African descent in North America. It is an
assemblage of poems written at vastly different moments, each poem with its
own inspiration, but they all explore the many legacies of the enslavement and
colonisation of black peoples on both sides of the Atlantic. These poems,
however, are not stories about the past. Rather, they are meant to serve as
contemporary stories that gaze into their historical antecedents to offer an
explanation for an imperfect present.

Though primarily a literary poet, Angela has dabbled in performance poetry,
participating in various showcases while an undergraduate student at the
University at Buffalo. She holds a bachelor’s in History and African-American
Studies and a master’s in History from The University of Iowa.