d'bi.young

Who is d'bi.young?

D'bi Young Anitafrika is a Jamaican-Canadian dub poet, monodramatist, and educator, as well as a Dora Award-winning actor and playwright. Raised Debbie Young in Jamaica, she moved to Canada in 1993.

As an actor, she has appeared in Trey Anthony's da kink in my hair, which garnered her a Dora nomination for best actress, and the television sitcom Lord Have Mercy!. She won outstanding new play and outstanding performance by a female in a principal role in a play in the 2006 Dora Mavor Moore Awards for her play blood.claat: one womban story.

In 2007 she facilitated a summer dub theatre program for youth in Toronto, which led her to founding and artistic directing anitafrika dub theatre. Young is the originator of the dub,oetry inspired arts-based personal and professional development methodology S.O.R.P.L.U.S.I., based on the seminal work of her mother Anita Stewart, a pioneer dub poet and member of Poets in Unity.

Young identifies her profession as "biomythicist", borrowing the term "biomyth" from the late Audre Lorde's combination of the terms for biography and mythology; she identifies her sexuality as queer.

She is curator of the Badilisha Poetry X-Change project created by the Africa Centre and artistic director of YEMOYA, an international artist-residency based in Jamaica.