Ayodele "WordSlanger" Nzinga, MFA, PhD is a multi-disciplined artist, community advocate, arts educator, and cultural architect invested in creating structures that facilitate cultural production. Working at the intersections of community well-being, cultural sovereignty, transformation, and change, Nzinga is a renaissance woman: an author, director, producer, thespian, dramaturge, and the inaugural Poet Laureate of Oakland. She is founding director of the Lower Bottom Playaz, Inc, Oakland's oldest North American African theater company; founding director of the Black Arts Movement Business District Community Development Corporation of Oakland; Producing Director of BAMBDFEST International Biennial; Lead Curator of BAM House Black Cultural Center; founding member of BlacSpace collective; co-founder of Janga’s House Black Woman’s Arts Collective; and host of the Winter in America Speakeasy.

She has been recognized as a member of the Alameda County Women's Hall of Fame, a YBCA 10 Fellow, YBCA Creative Corps Fellow, and California Arts Council Legacy Artist. She is the author of Performing Literacy: A Narrative Inquiry into Performance Pedagogy; The Horse Eaters; SorrowLand Oracle; and Incandescent, and her work appears in anthologies including Sparkle + Blink, Painting the Streets, The Patrice Lumumba Anthology, 14 Hills, African American Journal of Poetry, African Voices, and Magnolia Journal. Nzinga is the recurring Editor of the Black August issue of Blackbird Press & Review and the Co-Editor of The Town Anthology.