Khadijah Z.'s profile
Khadijah Z. Ali-Coleman, EdD is a multigenre writer based in Baltimore, MD. Her work interrogates perceptions of identity, justice, and place, often centering the lived experiences of Black women over 40. She is also the award-winning performance artist Khadijah Moon whose work spans poetry, songwriting, playwriting, and filmmaking. Dr. Ali-Coleman is a tenured Professor of Humanities at Coppin State University, where she founded the literary magazine Ma’at’s Feather. Her work has been supported by fellowships including a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Arts Award, two Prince George’s Arts and Humanities Council Artist Fellowships for two of her books, a Sankofa Tribe Fellowship to attend The Watering Hole annual retreat in 2024, a Kennedy Center Page to Stage residency, a Theater Alliance Quadrant Playwright Fellowship, and an HBCU MFA Think Tank fellowship at the 2025 AWP Conference. A Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad scholar, she served as Poet Laureate of Prince George’s County, MD, from 2023 to 2025 and received a Maryland General Assembly Citation for Public Service in the Literary Arts (2024) before moving to Baltimore, MD in 2025. From 2023-2025, she participated in almost 100 literary events presenting her own literary work, hosting readings and/or moderating panels featuring fellow writers.
Dr. Ali-Coleman is the author of the poetry collections Halos for Heroes, Friends & A Few People I Don’t Like (2026), A Park Stands on All of Our Graves (2025), For the Girls Who Do Too Much (2024), and The Summoning of Black Joy (2023), as well as the children’s book Mariah’s Maracas (2018). Her poetry and plays appear in Darling Nikki: An Anthology of Creative Works Dedicated to the Memory of Nikki Giovanni (2026), Circling with Poet Laureate Anthology (2023), Clarion, and The Skinny Poetry Journal, with forthcoming work in Obsidian and Black Fire This Time, Volume 3 (2027). Her plays can be found on the New Play Exchange and will be published as an anthology through Black Writers for Peace and Social Justice, Inc.
As a featured poet, author, and reader, she has shared her work at the Furious Flower Poetry Center’s 40th Anniversary Conference at James Madison University, Planet Word Museum, the Anacostia Community Museum (Smithsonian), Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Busboys and Poets, Red Emma’s, Ivy Bookshop, Sankofa Books, Mahogany Books, George Mason University, the Prince George’s County Memorial Library System, and a Langston Hughes birthday commemoration in Havana, Cuba, featuring Alice Walker. Her plays, songs, and poetry have been staged, workshopped, and read on dozens of stages, including the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Theater Alliance, Anacostia Playhouse, the Smithsonian Institution, the Baltimore Book Festival, ARTSCAPE, and Capital Fringe Festival. From 2019 to 2020 she served as Scholar-in-Residence at the Prince George’s County African American Museum and Cultural Center, where she curated the exhibit Flying Towards Freedom: Migration Stories of Maryland Families (2020).
She founded the nonprofit Black Writers for Peace and Social Justice, Inc. (2024), where she serves as CEO and editor-in-chief of its journal, Rebel’s Zeitgeist and the performance company Liberated Muse (2008). Her work has led to interviews with outlets including NPR, CNN, The Washington Post, USA Today, and The Guardian.
She holds a Doctorate in Education from Morgan State University, a Master of Arts in Mass Communication from Towson University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies and minor in Writing from UMBC, which honored her with an Outstanding Alumni Award in 2024.
