Kevin Simmonds

Kevin Simmonds is a writer, musician and filmmaker born in Chicago and raised in New Orleans. He studied Music at Vanderbilt University and went on to receive a Master’s Degree in Music at Tennessee State University. Later on, he completed his Ph.D. in music education at the University of South Carolina. Kevin Simmonds has had global influence and has performed his music in the UK, the Caribbean. His films have also been screened across many cities world-wide, including Hong Kong. He has lived in Japan, where he founded the Tono International Arts Association. He was also a recipient of a Fulbright fellowship to Singapore where he started the first-ever poetry workshop in Changi prison. As a writer and poet he has published numerous books, including, Mad for Meat (2011), Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets in Faith, Religion & Spirituality (2011) and Ota Benga Under My Mother’s Roof (2012). Additionally, his essays, articles, and poems have been published in numerous literary magazines. Currently, he creates and teaches privately in San Francisco.