On March 1, 2024, Professor Julia Carey Arendell‘s Crossover Art course, after reading Quess?’s book Sleeper Cell and about his work with Take ‘Em Down NOLA, will be visiting a site of a former Confederate monument in New Orleans at the intersection of Canal St. and Norman C. Francis Blvd. As a poet/activist, Quess? helped form and agitate the movement that led to the local government removing Confederate monuments around New Orleans. At this site visit, Quess? will talk about his work as an organizer, perform his poetry, and lead the students through their own creative exercises to embrace and explore their own power as artists.
A Scribe Called Quess? aka Michael “Quess?” Moore is a poet, educator, actor, playwright, activist and organizer in that order.
He is a 2-time national poetry slam champion and founding member of Team SNO (Slam New Orleans), New Orleans’ three-time national poetry slam championship team. His poetry has been published or featured by Pluck!, Nike, Congo TV, Balcony TV, Button Poetry, Write About Now Poetry, Spotify, Mic, Redbull and other platforms and earned him honors from the mayor and city council of New Orleans. He has shared stages with The Last Poets’ Abiondun Oyewole, Saul Williams, Jessica Care Moore, Mutubaruka, Danny Glover and many more.
His words led him to the classroom where he served for eleven years as an educator. His work as an educator has been highlighted on NPR in the Voices of Educators series as well as taken him to Oxford University to speak on school reform.
As a theater maker he has written for and acted in plays with Junebug Productions, ArtSpot Productions, Urban Bush Women and other esteemed outfits. As a 2014 New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center DISTILLERY resident, he work shopped his first stage play, “Crossroads.” He debuted his one-man show, “Sleeper Cell,” in the Fall 2017 In Fringe festival.
As an activist, he co-founded Take Em Down NOLA in 2015, a coalition dedicated to the removal of white supremacist symbols in New Orleans as a part of the greater push for racial and socio-economic justice. For his activism, he earned the 2017 Urban League Courage Award, was featured in the NY Times, The Republic, Trinidad & Tobago’s Kwame Toure Lecture Series, and several other platforms.
In May of 2016, he published his second collection of poetry, Sleeper Cell, through Next Left Press. He is a 2018 Hewlett 50 Commissions Award winner along with PolicyLink and the lead curating artist of Policy Link’s “We the 100” production set to debut in Fall 2020.