Ella Turenne

Ella Turenne is founder of BlacWomyn Beautiful, a platform that celebrates the beauty and power of Black women. She is Assistant Dean for Community Engagement at Occidental College where she works with students, faculty, staff and community partners to engage in social justice projects in Los Angeles. Ella's work has been published in various anthologies including Letters from Young Activists: Today’s Rebels Speak Out, Check the Rhyme: An Anthology of Female Poets and Emcees (nominated for a 2007 NAACP Image Award) and Woman’s Work: The Short Stories and most recently in "Turning Teaching Inside Out." She is the editor of a volume of visual art and poetry commemorating the Haitian revolution entitled "revolution|revolisyon|révolution 1804-2004: An Artistic Commemoration of the Haitian Revolution." Ella is also a filmmaker whose work has been an official selection of various national film festivals including the Hollywood Black Film Festival and the Montréal International Haitian Film Festival, where her short film "woodshed" was nominated for Best Short Film. In response to the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Ella co-edited a volume of poetry on Haiti called “For the Crowns of Your Heads;” the funds raised were used to aid a library that was destroyed in Port-au-Prince. She is a trainer with the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program and an active member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. She was also a member of the Blackout Arts Collective where she participated in Lyrics on Lockdown, a national tour where she performed and facilitated workshops educating communities about the prison-industrial complex. She was also co-founder of SistaPAC Productions, whose mission is to develop original creative works from women of color. Ella recently wrote and performed her first one women show, "Love, Locs & Liberation," a solo show about beauty identity and empowerment. For more, visit www.ellaturenne.com.