FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, June 11, 2024
Contact: media@vday.org

(Tuesday, June 11, 2024 – New York, New York) – A new audio play, VOICES: a sacred sisterscape, which premiered to sold out crowds at The Apollo Theatre on May 31, is now streaming across all audio platforms. Distributed by Blackstone Publishing, VOICES, is an audio experience of stories written by, narrated by and centering Black women across the diaspora.

Grammy nominated poet aja monet (“When The Poems Do What They Do”) was chosen by V (formally Eve Ensler) writer of The Vagina Monologues, to spearhead this audio experience. LeahAnn “Lafemmebear” Mitchell, a Grammy nominated producer, composed new music to accompany the audio play. VOICES is produced by Hollis Heath and V-Day.

“When we listen to people, when we hear people, they become known to us. And it’s much harder to hate and it’s much harder to hurt when we hold people inside of us in the knowing and the hearing of them.”

– V (formerly Eve Ensler)

When VOICES began in 2020, it was commissioned as a new artistic piece and campaign to move into the space The Vagina Monologues once occupied in the V-Day movement. monet began by inviting Black women to share their stories and participate in a call for their submissions. After receiving over 900 submissions, and two-years of gathering stories, collective study, and collaborating with Black women actors and musicians, a selection of poems was curated into a powerful audio play.

“This is a relatively new alternative and necessary approach, towards theatre, towards performances, towards our stories. We know we need to find new ways and get deeper into remembering what it is to be human, what it is to love, what it means to be transformed by each other, to learn from each other, to collaborate with each other, to strategize and work together. This is why listening became such a big part of this project. One of the most radical things we can do at this time is to listen, to compassionately listen and to be more involved in how we show up after we have listened.”

– aja monet, V-Day Voices Artistic Creative Director

VOICES is the newest artistic project and campaign out of V-Day, the global activist movement to end violence against all women, gender expansive people, girls and the Earth, founded by V (formerly Eve Ensler) in response to the overwhelming number of stories of violence heard in response to The Vagina Monologues. For over 25 years, V-Day has unleashed vast grassroots, anti-violence work on college campuses and in communities – visionary work that has been survivor-led and focused, all the while revealing the power of art and activism to change culture and systems.

For more information, please visit visforvoices.org and follow the journey at @visforvoices and @vdayorg.

Written by: Bella Laia, Black Girls Glow ft. Anabel Rose, KiKie, Ms. Fu, Nana Adjoa Agyepong, Pamm Takyiwaa, Poetra Asantewa & Wendy, Ceclia Faussart, Chamari White-Mink, Chelsea Williams, Cynthia Manick, Dalychia Saah, Dorothy Randall Gray, Flavia Diniz, Frieda Ndeutala Mukufa, Itohan Omolere Osaigbovo, Jasmine Knowles, Renee Wilson, Roslyn Smith, S. Pearl Sharp, Toya Lillard, Ursula Nyaboke Gisemba, Vanessa Appiagyei and Vangile Gantsho.

Narrated by: Black Girls Glow ft. Anabel Rose, KiKie, Ms. Fu, Nana Adjoa Agyepong, Pamm Takyiwaa, Poetra Asantewa & Wendy, Bisserat Tseggai, Carolyn Harrison, Cecila Faussart, Denise Burse, Flavia Diniz, Liza Jessie Peterson, Liz Mikel, Mars Rucker, Mumbi Kaigwa, Nila, Nyla Watson, Rutina Wesley, Roslyn Smith, Staceyann Chin, Stephanie Berry, Tyshawna Maddox, Vangile Gantsho and Zonya Love Johnson

ABOUT V-DAY – V-Day is a global activist movement to end violence against all women, gender expansive people, girls and the Earth.  For over 25 years, V-Day has unleashed vast grassroots, anti-violence work on college campuses and in communities – visionary work that has been survivor-led and focused, all the while revealing the power of art and activism to change culture and systems.  V-Day campaigns include One Billion Rising, City of Joy, the Beyond Incarceration Project, Dismantle Patriarchy Contest and now VOICES.  With ingenuity and determination, V-Day activists around the world are tirelessly working to end harassment, rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation, sex slavery.

AJA MONET (Artistic Creative Director) aja monet is a surrealist blues poet, storyteller, and organizer born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. She won the legendary Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam poetry award title in 2007 and aja monet follows in the long legacy and tradition of poets participating and assembling in social movements. Her first full collection of poems is titled, My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter on Haymarket Books. Her poems explore gender, race, migration, spirituality and much more. In 2018, she was nominated for a NAACP Literary Award for Poetry and in 2019 she was awarded the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Award for Poetry for her cultural organizing work in South Florida. aja monet cofounded a political home for artists and organizers called, Smoke Signals Studio. She facilitates “Voices: Poetry for the People,” a workshop and collective in collaboration with Community Justice Project and Dream Defenders. aja monet currently serves as new Artistic Creative Director, Voices Campaign, for V-Day, the global activist movement to end violence against all women and girls. She is working on her next full collection of poems entitled, Florida Water. @ajamonet

LEAHANN “LAFEMMEBEAR” MITCHELL (Composer) Meet LeahAnn Mitchell, also known as Lafemmebear, a trailblazing figure in the music industry. In 2021, she etched her name in history as the first black trans woman to produce a record featured on a Top Ten charting album. Her remix of “I’m a Survivor” on Reba McEntire’s “REVIVED, REMIXED, REVISITED” showcased her unparalleled talent and creativity.

Lafemmebear’s collaborative spirit knows no bounds, having worked with a diverse array of artists, from composing and sound designing for “Voices” with poet Aja Monet and the V-Day organization to working with Time’s Up, me too International, Peppermint, Bob the Drag Queen (RuPaul’s Drag Race), Dawn Richard, Suzi Analogue, and contributing to Sudan Archives’ latest Billboard charter “Selfish Soul.”

Beyond her music endeavors, Lafemmebear is also a prolific producer and director, spearheading the documentary series We See You: Black Trans Living Legends. This series is dedicated to preserving the invaluable legacies of Black queer and trans elders.

HOLLIS HEATH (Producer) Hollis Heath is an award-winning theatre artist, producer and girls and women’s empowerment leader. She is co-founder of Harlem KW Project, a theatre company that produced the Audelco award-winning play, Renaissance in the Belly of a Killer Whale. Hollis has spent the last decade crafting transformative cultural events, experiences and initiatives aimed at propelling the personal and professional growth of women of all ages. She has led experiences globally, producing programming and curriculum to empower young women to own their unique voice and connect them with brands and organizations to increase their social capital. Brands she has produced events for with young women include Coach, Verizon, Refinery 29, Benefit Cosmetics, American Express, Jet Blue, Universal Records, Salesforce, and many others. She holds a Masters in Educational Theatre from the City College of New York. She is in the process of writing her show Confessions of a Late Bloomer. @heartofhollis

V (formerly Eve Ensler) (Producer) V is the Tony award-winning playwright, author, and activist. Her play The Vagina Monologues is an Obie award-winning theatrical phenomenon that has been translated into 48 languages and performed in 140 countries. She’s the author of numerous plays off and on Broadway and many books, including bestsellers Reckoning, The Apology, and In the Body of the World. She is the founder of V-Day, the 26-year-old global activist movement that has raised over 120 million dollars to end violence against women, gender-expansive people, girls, and the planet—and founder of One Billion Rising, the largest global mass action to end gender-based violence in over 200 countries, as well as a co-founder of the City of Joy. She writes regularly for The Guardian.

Blackstone Publishing:
Founded in 1987, Blackstone continues to pioneer new and creative ways to bring stories to life. With multiple New York Times Best Sellers, Grammy award-winning audio productions, and three books placed on the New York Times Best Books of the Year list, Blackstone has firmly positioned itself as one of America’s fastest growing and respected publishing houses. A true independent, privately owned publisher, with offices on both coasts, Blackstone is home to a vibrant and eclectic community of storytellers and story lovers, offering hundreds of new titles each month to its catalog of 21,000+ books. The authors published are as varied as the books themselves, with works by some of the biggest names in literature including Gabriel García Márquez, Ayn Rand, Ian Fleming, George Orwell, Robert Heinlein, James Clavell, as well as more contemporary authors like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Karin Slaughter, Don Winslow, Robert Downey Jr., Jeneva Rose, Greg Harden, Norman Reedus, and many more.