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Jessica Care Moore is a poet, producer, activist, actor, interdisciplinary artist, and CEO of Moore Black Press. An internationally renowned performance artist, she is the author of The Words Don't Fit in My Mouth, The Alphabet Verses the Ghetto, God Is Not an American, and a forthcoming memoir, Love Is Not the Enemy.
She is the founder and producer of the hit concert and empowerment weekend Black Women Rock! BWR has featured such trailblazing artists as Joi, Tamar Kali, Imani Uzuri, RES, and many others, and features JCM's Black Women Rock Orchestra.
Moore has performed her poems and solo theater shows all over the United States, South Africa, Asia, and Europe. From her Broadway performances at Carnegie Hall, Harlem's Apollo Theater, and London's Institute of Contemporary Arts to New York's Jazz at Lincoln Center, Moore believes poems belong everywhere and to everyone.
She is well known for her history-making, record-breaking appearances on "It's Showtime at the Apollo," and is the youngest living Apollo Legend.
Her multimedia show, "God Is Not an American," was produced by The Apollo Theater and Time Warner's NYC Parks Summer Concert Series in 2009. She was the host, writer, and co-executive producer of the poetry-driven television show Spoken on The Black Family Channel, directed and executive produced by Robert Townsend. She is a five-time Showtime at the Apollo winner, has featured on hip-hop mega-star Nas' Nastradamus album, and was a returning star of Russell Simmons HBO series Def Poetry Jam.
Moore has graced the cover of The New York Times, The Metro Times, Michigan FrontPage, Detroit News, BLAC, Detroit Free Press, African Voices Magazine, and Black Elegance, and has been featured in print and online magazines across the world, including Essence, Blaze, Source, Vibe, Bomb, Mosaic, Good News, Savoy, One World, Upsale, Ambassador Magazine, MASH, UPTOWN, and others.
Moore has also been published in several literary collections, including "44 on 44," (Third World Press, 2011), "A Different Image," (U of DMercy Press, 2004), "Abandon Automobile," (WSU Press, 2001), "ListenUp!" (Random House, 1999), "Step Into a World," (Wiley Publishing, 2001), "Role Call" (Third World Press, 2002), and "Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam" (Crown Publishing, 2001). She is the youngest poet published in the Prentice Hall Anthology of African American Women's Literature by Valerie Lee, alongside literary greats as Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, Octavia Butler, Maya Angelou, and many others.
After her legendary win on the Apollo stage, Moore was approached by several book publishing companies, but in 1997, she paved her own path and launched a publishing company of her own – Moore Black Press. With it she released her first book, The Words Don't Fit in My Mouth, which sold more than 20,000 copies. A few years later, she followed up with her second collection of poetry and essays, The Alphabet Verses the Ghetto.
Moore Black Press proudly published such famed poets as Saul Williams and Shariff Simmons; Def Poetry Jam co-founder Danny Simmons; NBA basketball player Etan Thomas; activist and poet Ras Baraka; and former Essence magazine editor and author Asha Bandele.
This bold and electric artist has shared the stage with the late Ossie Davis; CeCe Winans; the late, great Gregory Hines; Anthony David; Norah Jones; Amiri Baraka; Patti Labelle; Roy Ayers; Mos Def; The Last Poets; Sonia Sanchez; Talib Kweli; Nikki Giovanni; Steve Harvey; Maya Angelou; and many others. In 1999, she was honored as Woman of the Year by the Harvard Black Men's Forum.
An activist, she has leant her voice to the international fight against AIDS. She has performed for the United Nations World AIDS Day Commemoration two years in a row. Moore was also a consultant and one of the organizers of the successful Hip-Hop-a-Thon Concert in San Francisco, which helped increase AIDS education in the black and Latino Bay-Area communities.
She has performed at several AIDS Walk Opening Ceremonies in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Florida, and Atlanta.
Her new multimedia theatrical show, "The Missing Project: Pieces of the D," is an international storytelling live art music show that features an experimental jazz orchestra and the work of graffiti artist Antonio "Shades" Agee. Her debut rock album, Black Tea, is forthcoming.
Moore continues to push the boundaries of genre, with her first conceptual art installation, "NANOC: I Sing the Body Electric," opening at Dell Pryor Gallery in 2011. She lives in Detroit, where she is completing her memoir, working on multimedia projects, and raising the four-year-old love of her life, King Moore.
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The Words Don't Fit in My Mouth: An Evening with Renaissance Woman Jessica Care Moore
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