About

qianya (she/her) is a black, queer, cis-femme who was raised by a village of strong, and equally fragile, black women. she writes heart-punch poetry, hilarious one-liners and loves to dig into the nuance of bullshit systems. 

qianya has a ba in gender studies from the university of california, santa cruz and a master of fine arts in design from academy of art university.  she was a founding member of harlem shake burlesque, an award-winning, all-black burlesque troupe (the brain-child of teresa ellis, aka simone de la getto) and has shown her knitwear collection at new york fashion week.  

she currently works on covid disaster response in black & african american communities with the san francisco department of public health.  she has taught university-level design, and is active in race and gender equity advocacy work.  

originally from los angeles, qianya lives in san francisco with her partner of 18 years.

~ in solidarity towards a common humanity


all writing and photos © 2020 by qianya vinson, unless otherwise stated.

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Subscribe to my newsletter and you will get an email worth reading when I post something new, which I can assure you won’t be terribly often cuz I like naps.

I get about 87 emails a day asking me to buy something or sign something. So, I love it when I don’t delete an email bc I actually want to read it, don’t you?

I am not one of those people who needs strangers to know what I’m thinking. But I share my writing here because I feel like someone else might relate. And I like to think that humans find ways to be more compassionate towards each other when they find ways to relate. This is also writing practice as I plan to write about once a weekish.

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Guttural poetry and musings on race, gender, queerness and discovering my inner Jew.

People

qianya vinson

qianya (she) is a poet, essayist, hopeful novelist, knitwear queen and all around black badass priestess in training living in SF.