Lisa Marie Rollins

Lisa Marie Rollins is a Black/Filipina writer, playwright and performer. She is one of many outspoken voices in the current wave of adult adoptee led critical education and advocacy concerning transracial/ international adoption education, the politics of race, and adoptee healing. She has been featured on CNN, HuffPostLive, NPR and received the honor of one of Colorlines magazine’s “Innovators to Watch” for her work around reproductive justice / global adoption and race. She is the Founder of AFAAD (Adopted and Fostered Adults of the African Diaspora) a nonprofit organization that supports Black adopted people across the globe.

She is a Callaloo Fellow in Poetry, a two time alumnus in Poetry from the VONA Voices Writing Workshop, and was the 2010-2011 Poet in Residence at June Jordan’s Poetry for the People at U.C. Berkeley. She is a recipient of the James Irvine and Zellerbach Foundations “Individual Artist” Grants for her acclaimed solo play, “Ungrateful Daughter: One Black girls story of being adopted into a White family… that aren’t Celebrities”. Her most recent publications can be found in Other Tongues: Mixed-Race Women Speak Out, As/Us Literary Journal, The Pacific Review, and Line/Break Special Issue on Asian American Adoptee poetry. She is currently focused in on her new manuscript of poems “Anchoring the Compass”. She holds an M.A. in Cultural Studies, an M.A. in African American Studies from University of California, Berkeley. Her future Ph.D. disseration work examines the structuring of Black Women's bodies in the discourse of domestic and global transracial adoption. She sometimes is a Lecturer in Ethnic Studies at CSU, East Bay and SFSU.

She currently advises as Creative Consultant on literary and performance projects, including the facilitation of a "*Solo House*: Writing and Directing the One-Person Show". She is a founding member and was Assistant Teacher of the *Solo Performance Workshop* in San Francisco. She was a co-producer of the acclaimed “W. Kamau Bell Curve: Ending Racism in About an Hour”, the basis for FX’s 2012 television series, “Totally Biased w W. Kamau Bell”. She was a Director of “All Atheists are Muslim” by Zahra Noorbakhsh, Chicana Feminist Troupe “Las Manas Tres”. Her most recent production was “A History of the Body” by poet/playwright Aimee Suzara.

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