Stevona Elem-Rogers (Stevie, like Wonder!) is a writer, educator, and cultural worker bearing witness to Black life with tenderness, clarity, and the South rolling off her tongue.

Raised in Titusville, a Birmingham neighborhood established by self-emancipated people, she was surrounded by beautifiers, storytellers, and grassroots strategists whose freedom dreams shaped her worldview. Her father, a pioneering grocer who fought food insecurity, and her mother, a daughter of the Black Liberation Movement, taught her transformation requires radical imagination.

Stevona holds a B.A. in English and African American Studies from the University of Alabama and an M.A. in Teaching. She began her career teaching high school English in New Orleans, where veteran Black educators sharpened her craft and confidence. There, she developed the city’s first African American Literature course in post-Katrina charter schools, centering culturally affirming works like Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Haile Gerima’s Sankofa.

Later, she advanced Teach For America's national Culturally Responsive Teaching efforts, co-founded Black Education for New Orleans (BE NOLA), and conceived Black Is Brilliant, a Harvard-recognized initiative bringing together a national summit, institute, and public research to honor Black-founded schools and uplift educators as creative and intellectual leaders.

She also launched Black Women Are For Grown-Ups (BWAFGU), a viral mantra turned social arts project amplifying Black women’s full humanity through intentional writing, objects, and gatherings. Supported by LeVar Burton, Nikki Giovanni, and Sonia Sanchez, the project established the nation’s first Little Free Library exclusively dedicated to books by Black women.

Named one of Refinery29’s “20 Black Women You Should Know,” Stevona has written for The New York Times with Cleo Wade, i-D Magazine with a cover on Solange Knowles, and Essence Magazine, where her “Dear New Orleans”cover marked the Essence Festival’s 30th anniversary.

Across her work, she merges literature, archival research, and immersive community experiences to honor Black interior life and push back against narratives that overlook brilliance, creativity, and complexity.

For two decades, she has been writing, world-building, and wobblin' to Cash Money Records in New Orleans.

Follow her journey: stevie_elem