2022 Performer Spotlight: Sojourner Kincaid Rolle

Sojourner Kincaid Rolle is a poet, playwright, an environmental educator and a peace activist. She served as the Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara, CA. (2015-2017). Her book of poems for young people, The Mellow Yellow Global Umbrella, was published as an e-book and as an audio book by Lucky Penny Press (2013). Her other books include Common Ancestry (Millie Grazie Press, 1999) and Black Street, (Center for Black Studies Research – 2009). Her poems have appeared in the publications California Quarterly, Coffee Press, Squaw Review and others, and in the following anthologies: The Geography of Home (Heyday Books, 1999), Rivertalk 2000, Poetry Zone I, II & III, The Poetry of Peace (Capra Press), A Crow Black as the Sun (Green Poet Press, 2011) and Corners of the Mouth: Celebrating 30 Years of the SLO Poetry Festival (2014 ). She has engaged young poets through her “Song of Place Poetry Project” and her work with City At Peace, Speak for the Creeks, the Annual Young Writers Poetry Contest and the MLK Poetry and Essay Contest. She hosts a monthly poetry event, The Poetry Zone, and for the past 13 years has organized an annual tribute to poetry icon Langston Hughes. Rolle is a two-time recipient of the California Arts Council’ Artist-in-Residence program and for eight years led poetry workshops in schools throughout the South County as a part of the Santa Barbara Public Library’s Elli program. Her current book, “Free at Last” is a children’s book that showcases her poem on Juneteenth and was published in 2022.

Special thanks to Rex Bridgeforth II and The Sure Shot Media for the video and Terramabilia for the photos below.