[Black American, b. 1984, New York, New York.]

A poet-performer and artist-researcher, Adrienne Oliver was conservatory-trained in Meisner technique at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (’06) and studied cinematography and studio art at the University of Virginia, where she was a film and media studies Community Scholar under Kevin Jerome Everson (’10). Her writings and scholarship have appeared in The Plentitudes, Apogee Journal, Burnaway Magazine, The Night Heron Barks, and Puerto del Sol. Her performances, films, and sound works have premiered in Virginia, North Carolina, New Orleans, and New York; she was an Emerging Voices Fellow (’21), a founding member of the Unsettling Grounds Project (’23), and a Tin House Workshop Fellow (’24). Oliver appreciates the financial support received from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Sonya Haynes Stones Center for Black Culture & History, PEN America, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, SAIC alum Bryan Lathrop, and The John and Mary E. Hoggins Scholarship. Oliver is the Director of New Works at Live Arts Theater in Charlottesville, Virginia, and a veteran public school advocate and educator specializing in arts integration, decolonial pedagogies, and literacy.

Adrienne is based on Monacan land, where she lives with her daughter at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Her academic and artistic foci include Black “maternal” rhetoric, American Southern surrealist jazz logic/s, and Afrofuturist hybridity; critical theory, cultural and performance studies, and artistic/practice-based research methodologies; and cosmo/eco-aesthetics, autopoiesis, and other grammars of fugitivity. She is available for representation and academic appointments.