Chandler Grant is a writer and spoken word artist. She is the winner of the 2025 Janef Newman Preston Award for Poetry and the 2026 Betty W. Stoffel Award for Poetry and Creative Writing.
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1. The beginning. A little Black girl sits at her desk. A pencil in hand, books stacked aside her. The pencil races across the lined page, unable to keep up with the story inside her. Music blasts outside of her…
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Black Girl Smiling
Black girl smiling, You are sun and moon and shine and rain. You are the smell of freshly baked pies on Sunday, the clean air of Monday. You are loved, needed, and wanted from above – you are what I…
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A Word on Excellence: A Spoken Word
Written for a Black Excellence Banquet at Agnes Scott College. I’d like to apologize in advance for the words I’m about to say. You probably didn’t expect to get read today as if you booked an appointment with your therapist,…
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On Hate and Love: A Spoken Word Poem
Written for an event memorializing Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King. I have come to realize that hate doesn’t always look like burning crosses and murderous eyes, but also the cries of those whose plights have caged them…