Expanding Our Roots: Donney Rose

Expanding Our Roots: Global Conversations With 821 is an online interview series hosted by The 821 Project. The purpose of the series is to showcases the cultural diversity, global connections and social consciousness of the people of southeast Louisiana as well as those who work to expand southeast Louisiana’s roots to the world through works that promote social justice and global citizenship.

The series presents community organizers, community leaders and residents living in southeast Louisiana who come from different parts of the world or who work to promote global citizenship, multiculturalism and social justice in our regional community.

This interview is with Donney Rose. Donney Rose is a poet, teaching artist, essayist and community activist from Baton Rouge. He is the creator of THE AMERICAN AUDIT, a multimedia spoken word project detailing 400 years of Black American life using the extended metaphor of America as a business being audited. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing from Southern University and A&M College in Baton Rouge.

He is a 2018-2019 Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellow and a member of Baton Rouge Business Report's 2017 Forty Under 40 Class. His work as a performance poet/writer has been featured in a variety of publications, including Atlanta Black Star, Blavity, Button Poetry, All Def Digital, Slam Find, [225] Magazine, Drunk In A Midnight Choir, Mocking Heart Review, University of New Orleans’ Bayou Magazine and Nicholls State University's Gris-Gris literary journal.

His work as a community activist has been highlighted on BBC, Democracy Now, in New York Times and The Advocate newspaper. Donney also contributed two scholarly articles to the St. James Encyclopedia of Hip Hop Culture, 1st Edition (St. James Press, February 2018) and works as a contributing writer for The North Star.