about
james...
he uses word and sound to craft experiences, stories, and characters that center the beauty and heart of people—especially those in the healing process. through creative peacemaking, restorative education, and liberating expression, he strives to create art and spaces that provide timeless evidence that restoration is possible, no matter the people, place, or origin, challenging those around him to find and love their authentic selves as they grow, establishing lasting peace, joy, harmony and liberation.
a fellow of The Watering Hole, his written work appears in Windhover (2021, 2022) and “The Black Love Book” anthology from SoftSavagePress in partnership with Glorifying Blackness (2023). james also was awarded a 21st Century Emily Dickinson Award from Bookleaf Publishing (2021) and the Third Place Poetry Prize in the 2022 North Carolina College Media Association Media Contest.
james has performed poetry and hip-hop for and collaborated with Abundance NC’s Annual Death Faire (2020), Nation of Diversity (2021), the NC State’s Women’s Center Annual Sisterhood Dinner (2020), the North Carolina Dance Festival’s Creative Collaboration Exchange (2023), and the Chapel Hill Poet Laureate Cortland Gilliam’s “poet is a verb” series (2024).
james has 10+ years of teaching experience, teaching middle school English in Wake County Schools, leading poetry and hip-hop workshops for Dance Project Inc., TAB Art Center, Student U Durham, North Carolina State University’s Women of Welch (WoW) and Students Advocating for Youth (SAY) campus villages, the Johnston County Boys and Girls Club (now My Kids Club of Johnston County), Wake County Schools, and Guilford County Schools, creating educational opportunities for writers and teachers through hosted conversational events like the “Bridge Builders: Black Dialogues, Connections, Transformations — in Conversation with Tyree Daye” at the 2023 Conference on African American and African Diasporic Cultures and Experience.
james earned Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing with the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (2024), earned a B.S. in Middle Grades Language Arts and Social Studies Education (6-9) (2021), and holds a middle grades teaching licensure in Language Arts and Social Studies.
sol love (sol art)…
is a philosophy james has created, taking inspiration from the life-giving power of the sun–hence sol (rooted in both his my love and roots in the Spanish language and the story of Solomon from the Bible)–and the heart of what he believes will heal a hurting world: love. his sol love philosophy is guided by a four-part creative framework: Beauty. Love. Healing. Restoration. his framework states that, by 1. affirming the beauty in all beings, 2. using actions of love to affirm that beauty, 3. seeking to repair the harm done to that beauty (i.e. dehumanization) with those actions of love in order to heal, and 4. do all of this in order to restore ourselves to be better than we were yesterday, we can begin to spark change and establish joy in ourselves and our communities.
Beauty. Love. Healing. Restoration.
practically, james believes that we can do this through restorative justice and creative peacemaking, building spaces in which we can ensure a community’s needs are met while pushing them to find value in themselves in creative ways. for now, it is just the philosophy and copywritten identity through which james creates his art, but keep your eyes open for more–sol love crafts sol art.
