Some people talk about change. Jillian Hanesworth writes it down, binds it up, and puts it in your hands.
Born and raised on the East Side of Buffalo, New York, Jillian Hanesworth developed a vision from a young age to use art and advocacy to help her community reimagine justice and work together to create a system where all people can thrive. That vision didn’t stay in her head or on a stage. It found its permanent home on the page. And the literary world has never been the same.
Jillian began writing at the age of 7, when she would write songs for her mother to sing in church. Let that sink in. Seven years old. Before she had a platform, before she had a title, before the world knew her name. She was already writing for something bigger than herself. That kind of calling doesn’t develop. It’s born.
Her early work, “They Say I Talk “White,” is a collection of topics, opinions, and poems that touch on subjects that are popular and somewhat controversial in the African American community, written with the purpose of sparking conversations that need to be had. She was barely out of her teens and already refusing to play it safe. Already insisting that Black people deserve nuanced, honest, uncomfortable conversations in print and not just in the streets.
Then came For The Culture in 2017, a book of original poetry featuring artwork by Tyshaun Tyson, a collaboration between word and image, between poet and visual artist, that embodied everything Jillian stands for: community, creativity, and culture as resistance.
But it was The Revolution Will Rhyme, her second collection published in 2021 with a foreword by the legendary Cornel West, that truly announced her arrival on the national literary stage. In it, Hanesworth explores the idea of revolutionary change through a personal and community lens, examining both internal revolution and the collective demand for systemic transformation. A foreword from Cornel West isn’t given. It’s earned. And Jillian earned every word of it.
By that point, she had performed over 200 times across Buffalo, New York City, Baltimore, Toronto, and everywhere in between, letting her passion lead her mission to empower listeners to take part in demanding and creating sustainable systemic change. The books and the performances aren’t separate. They’re the same sermon, delivered in different sanctuaries.
And if her books weren’t enough, Jillian founded Literary Freedom LLC in 2021 to expand literary access to communities of color and historically excluded communities. Because writing the books was never the whole mission. Getting them into the right hands always was.
Through her Buffalo Books project, she has placed over one thousand books into the hands of members of Buffalo’s East and West Side communities. She knows that representation on the page matters. That when a Black child from the East Side sees themselves in a book, something shifts in them permanently. Jillian has been engineering that shift, quietly, consistently, for years.
And in case you need the receipts on her range: Jillian Hanesworth, spoken word artist, activist, and Buffalo’s former Poet Laureate, won the Dick Schaap Outstanding Writing Award at the 2024 Sports Emmy Awards for her work on the NFL 360 short feature “Still Here.” From the page to the screen. From the block to Lincoln Center. That’s the full arc of a woman who never stopped writing.
Poetic Stories had the honor of sitting down with Jillian for an exclusive interview, filmed by Stephen Rosenthal and featuring the radiant Angel Lee and Lysette Hill of Manevue Salon Boutique because platforms like this exist for exactly this kind of greatness. The interview, credited to IIUTI Media, captured Jillian the way her work deserves to be captured: with intention, with care, and with room for the truth to breathe.
Jillian Hanesworth is a writer in the truest sense, not just of poems, but of history. Pick up her books. Feel what it means when someone refuses to let the story die.
Jillian Hanesworth Emmy acceptance Speech.
