Steven Antoine Willis is a poet, theater artist, and educator whose work centers language as a living, embodied practice. Born and raised in Chicago, his writing and performance draw from urban life, spirituality, and African American cultural memory, blending the immediacy of spoken word with the rigor of literary craft and theatrical intention. His work engages hip hop poetics, performance theory, and critical pedagogy to explore identity, power, and communal responsibility.

A three-time Individual World Poetry Slam finalist, Willis has contributed to the BreakBeat Poets Anthology and NYU’s National Council of Teachers of English Journal. He holds an MFA in Acting from the University of Iowa, completed the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in poetry, and earned an M.S.Ed. in Education Entrepreneurship from the University of Pennsylvania. His debut poetry collection, A Peculiar People, was published by Button Poetry.