Born in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, and having lived in six different states before age fifteen, Lizz chronicled her rich life through creative writing.
She became a literary luminary at a young age, writing poems for family, friends, and her high school newspaper and creative writing journal. She started performing spoken word at nineteen in Jacksonville, Florida. The way she stepped to the mic was gritty and in-your-face as much as it was poised and graceful. Lizz fashioned her stage presence from experiences that forced her to cross lines of culture, race, and class. With over 20 years spent honing her craft, she has developed a knack for weaving stories from her life’s journey into a literary tapestry that any audience can relate to.
Lizz received her AA degree from the University of North Florida in Mass Communications and Photography. She received her BA in English Creative Writing from the University of South Florida. Throughout her poetry career, she has accumulated countless awards and accolades. Lizz’s talent as a performance artist allowed her to tour the U.S., Europe, and the Caribbean performing and teaching poetry.
From 2005 to 2010 Lizz hosted, produced, and engineered a weekly poetry radio show titled "Poetry Is," broadcast on WMNF 88. 5 FM, out of Tampa, FL, and on the web at WMNF.org. After a few weeks on the air Lizz’s notoriety skyrocketed. She was WMNF's Programmer of the Year in 2007 by her colleagues, and she was tasked with interviewing artists such as Common, The Last Poets, Anthony David, Chrisette Michelle, and Dwele.
Lizz is widely applauded for her work in correctional institutions throughout central, north, and south Florida, bringing poetry inside the walls of the Florida state, and federal prison systems. This was a direct result of Poetry Is… having a large listenership of people serving time behind bars. Her poetry outreach involved local poets and musicians who volunteered to perform inside correctional institutions, work release centers, and juvenile centers, affectionately referring to themselves as “Lizz Straight Ministries.”
The prison tour was created after Lizz received an invitation to perform via snail mail from an inmate at Hardee Correctional Institution who was a faithful listener of her radio show. After that performance, Lizz decided to put her personal poetry touring schedule on hold, and instead to see how many prisons she could perform at over the course of one month. Black History Month. Since that inaugural tour, the program expanded to three months out of the year - February (Black History Month) and March (Women's History Month), and April (National Poetry Month) due to the demand for The Poetry Is… Prison Tour within the Florida Department of Corrections. The tour reached over 20 institutions across the state.
Lizz joined StoryCorps in the summer of 2010. Working for StoryCorps as a Mobile Facilitator allowed Lizz to travel all over the country as a part of a national oral history project furthering the mission of accurately representing the voices of the voiceless; the workers, teachers, and veterans; the common man, woman, and child. The forty minutes of recording time spent in that booth was a memory everyone involved will carry forever. Lizz got to cry, laugh and reminisce with all of them, becoming a part of their lives albeit for a short period of time. Lizz embraced the responsibility of ensuring memory was captured to preserve the love found in stories of human connection. Five stories that Lizz facilitated were chosen for the national broadcast on NPR’s Morning Edition.
After celebrating the birth of her daughter Alora in 2011, Lizz retired from the life of a full-time artist and audio producer and began teaching middle school language arts and creative writing, as well as mindfulness and meditation, in Palm Beach County, FL.
Poetry Honors/Awards
2003 - Individual 1st Place Winner, Southern Fried Poetry Slam
2003 - Team 11th Place, National Poetry Slam
2004 - Individual 2nd Place Winner, Southern Fried Poetry Slam
2004 - Team 2nd Place Winner, Southern Fried Poetry Slam
2005 - Individual 2nd Place Winner, Southern Fried Poetry Slam
2006 - Individual 5th Place Winner, Southern Fried Poetry Slam
2006 - Winner of Tampa Bay Black Heritage Festival Poetry Slam
2007 - Individual 2nd Place Winner, Southern Fried Poetry Slam
2007 - Team 3rd Place Winner, Southern Fried Poetry Slam
2008 - Team 1st Place Winner, Southern Fried Poetry Slam
2008 - 7th Ranked, Individual World Poetry Slam
Individual World Poetry Slam Wikipedia Page Listing
2013 - Team 1st Place Winner, Southern Fried Poetry Slam
2014 - Team 3rd Place Winner, Southern Fried Poetry Slam
2014 - Individual 4th Place Winner, Southern Fried Poetry Slam
University Of South Florida - Tampa, FL | Published in Coastlines, Undergraduate Journal
Florida Atlantic University - Boca Raton, FL | Published in Thread, Undergraduate Journal
University Of North Florida - Jacksonville, FL | First Reader, Fiction Fix, Undergraduate Journal
Florida Chapter Lead - Women Who Submit Literary Nonprofit
WMNF, 88.5FM - Tampa, FL | Programmer of the Year (2007)
StoryCorps - Facilitated national broadcast selections on NPR’s Morning Edition:
★ Https://storycorps.org/stories/reverend-eric-williams-and-jannette-berkley-patton/
★ Https://storycorps.org/stories/dee-dickson/
★ Https://storycorps.org/stories/bud-norton-and-his-nephew-tim-locher/
