RA Washington

RA Washington is a writer, musician, conceptual artist and community organizer who has been part of Cleveland's art scene since moving to the city in 1991. He has co-founded a string of DIY spaces, among them Inside Outside Gallery, The Church of Albert Ayler and Guide to Kulchur, the cooperative press, bookstore and arts space in Gordon Square that he founded and directed, with a speaker series, publishing projects and book donations to people in prison.

He has written poems, novels and essays, including The Paris Notebooks (NightBallet Press, 2014) and a memoir trilogy from Outlandish Press, BODY, Black Eunuch and Baldwin Notes (2017 to 2021). As a composer, instrumentalist and vocalist he has played in Vernacular and Blk Tygr, and he co-founded Mourning [A] BLKstar, which received the 2021 Cleveland Arts Prize in Music. He has also been poet-in-residence at the Cleveland Museum of Art and was named a 2014 Creative Workforce Fellow by Cuyahoga Arts and Culture and the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture.