is an award-winning Black U.S. American gay poet, spoken word artist, and Hip-Hop educational leader from Washington DC. Or, you can just call him an “Ed Emcee”. He is the debut author of How the Boogeyman Became a Poet and Knucklehead, both published by Harper Collins.

A multi-year fellow of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Tony has featured performances at John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington National Cathedral, Historic Lincoln Theatre, Bus Boys & Poets, and in schools and communities around the world including South Africa, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago and many more.

His poem Black Man On Fire won first prize in the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest and his performance of Code Switched is featured in the award-winning documentary series Talking Black in America and published in Centering Possibility in Black Education. Also, his poem Views For Damani is published in Poemhood: Our Black Revival - a YA poetry anthology about history, folklore and the Black experience.

Career

Tony is a former cultural center director, student advisor, and adjunct professor of global diversity, culture and Hip Hop at several universities including: Penn State University, University of North Carolina Charlotte, University of the District of Columbia, and the University of Maryland College Park (UMD). He is also co-author of the award-winning book Open Mic Night: Campus Programs that Champion College Student Voice and Engagement, and his academic work appears in the International Journal of Critical Media Literacy, Equity & Excellence in Education, the Journal of Black Masculinity, the Journal of Negro Education and several others.

Tony holds a BA in Communication Studies from University of Maryland College Park, an M.Ed. in College Student Affairs from Penn State University, and PhD in Education Leadership from George Mason University. Notably, his dissertation received outstanding recognition and awards from the American Education Research Association and Humanities DC, and his innovative research method Blackout Poetic Transcription (BPT) is published in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Hip Hop Pedaogy.

Currently, Tony serves as founder and CEO of Ed Emcee Academy, is on the board of Directors at Shout Mouse Press, and teaches English Language Arts for adult learners at Academy of Hope in his DC hometown, where he resides with his husband, Harry Christian III.

Dr. Tony Keith Jr.