About 

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. Her journalistic bylines have appeared in over 25 print and digital publications, including Pathways Magazine, EBONY, The Washington Informer, The Afro, East of the River Magazine, The Kappan, SoulBounce, Honey Magazine, SoulTrain.com, Romper, and, The Baltimore Times.

Dr. Ali-Coleman is the author of several poetry collections, including A Park Stands on All of Our Graves (2025), 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). She is currently editing the forthcoming book, Homeschooling Black Children on a College Pathway, scheduled to print in 2026 by Black Writers for Peace and Social Justice, Inc.

Dr. Ali-Coleman's creative work is focused on the experiences of people of the African diaspora, particularly women and those born in the US. 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 she produced at the Anacostia Arts Gallery. She also curated the performance stages for the multi-year Capital Hip Hop Soul Festival (2008-2010) as founder and operations manager of the festival, and the Creative Creatives Creating (C3) Performance Series (2016-2020), a showcase she hosted and produced in Baltimore and Washington DC, showcasing 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 curation 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. She is editor of the Emerald Publishing series, Contermporary Perspectives on Black Homeschooling, and serves on the Board of Directors for Impact Hub Baltimore. 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 and will be published as an anthology soon through Black Writers for Peace and Social Justice, Inc. She has produced and hosted several radio and podcast shows, including the podcast blck creatives in liminial spaces (2024-present); Contemporary Perspectives on Black Homeschooling podcast (2020-present); the Black Writers Studio podcast (2022-2024), and the"Unbound" segment on the First Edition with Sean Yoes radio show on WEAA 88.9 FM (2017).  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 where she serves as faculty advisor for the English honor society, Sigma Tau Delta. She also teaches media and communication studies as an adjunct at the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC). 

An MFA student in the University of Baltimore's Creative Writing and Publishing program, 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.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My mission as a creative is to transform spaces into arts spaces where people are inspired to engage more with the information that I have introduced to them through my art. My vision is to impact societal norms where we all begin to understand that creativity and the arts are as necessary to our everyday well-being as foundational knowledge and engagement in math, science, geography, history and daily movement. In fact, all of those areas just mentioned can be experienced through an arts-based lens, creating an interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary experience that activates all areas of the mind and body.

                                                                              -Khadijah Z. Ali-Coleman

AESTHETIC STATEMENT

My creative practice is a call to the people. It is built on the wisdom of iconic freedom fighters, from Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Kwame Ture, to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Paul Robeson. This wisdom has led me to dig deep into my own buried truths. I use realism and humor to engage audiences and convey vivid storytelling. This work is a testimony and a declaration that I am here, that I am witness, that I am doer, and that I have the agency to tell my story. I am the keeper of my own words. Like the choreography of Alvin Ailey, paintings of Jacob Lawrence, and the quilts of Faith Ringgold, my writing imbues my desire to be a keeper of our culture of community, movement building and liberation.
 

Dr. Ali-Coleman homeschooled her own daughter off and on for 13 years in addition to being a researcher on homeschooling in the Black community. Her doctoral dissertation research was published in 2020 and is titled, Dual Enrolled African American Homeschooled Students' Perceptions of Preparedness for Community College. She crafted a short film about her homeschooling experience and her research that was featured in the 5th annual Black Sustainability Summit. Click the button below to watch.

Learn more HERE about her education group Black Family Homeschool Educators and Scholars, LLC and the companion resource group for parents.