Baker Artist Portfolios

“Make up a story... For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief's wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul.”
― Toni Morrison, The Nobel Lecture In Literature, 1993

Khadijah Z. Ali-Coleman, EdD is a community organizer and cultural architect with over 20 years of experience transforming spaces into vibrant arts and educational hubs. Her work interrogates perceptions of identity, justice, and place, often centering the lived experiences of Black women over 40. Embracing her multifaceted identity as a creator, she is also the award-winning performance artist Khadijah Moon and a multi-genre writer whose work spans poetry, songwriting, playwriting, and filmmaking. 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 Baltimore Book Festival, National Harbor, ARTSCAPE, Capital Fringe Festival, and the Anacostia Arts Center.

Dr. Ali-Coleman is the author of several poetry collections, including the forthcoming Halos for Heroes, Friends and a Few People I Don't Like (2026) and A Park Stands on All of Our Graves (2025), as well as For the Girls Who Do Too Much (2024) and The Summoning of Black Joy (2023). She also authored the children’s book Mariah's Maracas (2018) and co-edited Homeschooling Black Children in the US: Theory, Practice and Popular Culture (2022). Her work has been supported by numerous grants and fellowships, including an Independent Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council (2015); multiple Artist Fellowships from the Prince George's Arts and Humanities Council (2024, 2025); a Sankofa Tribe Fellowship from The Watering Hole (2024); a Kennedy Center Page to Stage residency fellowship (2021); a Theatre Alliance DC Quadrant Playwright Fellowship (2020); presentation funding from Poets & Writers; and faculty grants from the Prince George's Community College Foundation and Northern Virginia Community College. A 2019 Fulbright-Hays GPA Scholar, she served as the Poet Laureate of Prince George's County, MD, from 2023 to 2025.

Dr. Ali-Coleman has produced, lead-curated, or co-curated over three dozen exhibits, festivals, and multi-disciplinary events since 2001. Her curatorial work often centers on amplifying African American narratives and providing a platform for diverse artists. Notable projects include the visual arts exhibit, film festival, and short play showcase collectively titled unboxed/unbroken: A Celebration of Black Resilience for the 2018 Kwanzaa in August festival at the Anacostia Arts Gallery. She also curated the performance stages for the multi-year Capital Hip Hop Soul Festival (2008-2010) and the Creative Creatives Creating (C3) Performance Series (2016-2020), which showcased dozens of musicians and performers.

Further highlighting her scholarly and community-based approach, Dr. Ali-Coleman curated the exhibit Flying Towards Freedom: Migration Stories of Maryland Families, which was installed at the Prince George's County Memorial Library System in 2020. During her tenure as Scholar-in-Residence at the Prince George's County African American Museum and Cultural Center, she facilitated the monthly Sunday Scholar Salon, drawing from her expertise in education, arts, and African American history. Her dedication to film is evidenced by her role as event chair for The GRIND conference, curating the conference's student film festival at Morgan State University in 2018 as a graduate student, further demonstrating her commitment to fostering artistic expression across multiple disciplines.

She is a professional member of The Dramatists Guild, The Recording Academy, and the Association of African American Museums. Dr. Ali-Coleman is the founder of several organizations, including the nonprofit Black Writers for Peace and Social Justice, Inc. founded in 2024; the education research group Black Family Homeschool Educators and Scholars, LLC founded in 2020; and the performance company Liberated Muse, which she founded in 2008. Her plays can be found on the New Play Exchange. Due to her impactful work in arts and education, she has been interviewed by media outlets such as NPR, CNN, Slate, NBC, FOX, CBS, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Guardian, The Baltimore Times, The AFRO, and The Financial Times.

Dr. Ali-Coleman is currently based in the historic Druid Heights community of Baltimore, MD, once home to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, jazz legends Cab Calloway, and Billie Holiday, and Afro-American newspaper editor Carl Murphy. Currently, she is an Associate Professor in the Humanities department at the Baltimore HBCU Coppin State University and teaches media and communication studies as an adjunct at the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC). 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 (African American Studies and Mass Media) with a minor in Writing from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). She also earned a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) in the Workplace Certificate from the University of South Florida's Muma College of Business in 2021. In 2024, she received an Outstanding UMBC Alumni Award.