d’bi.young anitafrika is a nonbinary African-Xaymacan-Tkarontonian dub poet, monodramatist and scholar. They are committed to embodying liberatory art practices that ritualise acts of emancipation from oppressions inflicted upon the people and the planet. The three-time Dora-award-winning Canadian poet of honour, author of twelve plays, seven albums, and four collections of poetry, was recently celebrated as a Global Leader in Theatre and Performance by Arts Council England and is a recipient of the Rosemary Sadlier Freedom Award. d’bi.young’s PhD research investigates how Black womxn theatre-makers in Canada, cultivate decolonial praxes and pedagogies of transformation through performance. Their doctoral thesis further develops their Anitafrika Method—a Black-queer-feminist framework that emerges from the dub theory of Anita Stewart (d’bi.young’s mother).
Throughout the last twenty-five years, d’bi.young has written poetry, created plays, published books, developed a decolonial framework and founded Black-queer-feminist initiatives such as fiwi aat space, anitafrika dub theatre, Spolrusie Press, Watah Theatre and Ubuntu! Decolonial Arts Centre. Their commitment to designing and facilitating decolonial artist-mentorship opportunities has facilitated the growth and development of hundreds of artists on Turtle Island, in the Caribbean, in Africa and in Europe. Most recently d’bi.young appeared in Trey Anthony’s ‘da kink in my hair as Stacey-Anne, to sold-out audiences at the Bluma Appel Theatre in Tkaronto and received a Dora nomination for their performance.
Current projects include publishing Dub Poetry to Dubbin Theatre: The Collected Writings of Anita Stewart and dubbin theatre: the collected plays of d’bi.young anitafrika, writing the first monograph on Black womxn’s theatre in Canada and establishing Ubuntu! Decolonial Arts Centre in Costa Rica, where international practitioners engage in decolonial arts praxis.
