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Sean Avery Medlin

Poet, Essayist, & Rapper
Sean Avery Medlin writes poems, raps, and essays. They’re a M.F.A candidate in Randolph College’s Creative Writing program. Their art questions the limitations of Black masculinity and media (mis)representation. They’ve been featured in Phoenix New Times, Chicago Tribune and Teen Vogue. Their work, including Hip-Hop play and album skinnyblk (2016), rap EP I Never Left (2021), and poetry / chamber music collaboration ECHOES (2025), is available on streaming platforms and their website superseanavery.com. Medlin’s debut book, 808s & Otherworlds: Memories, Remixes, & Mythologies (Two Dollar Radio, 2021, Dead Ink Books, 2022) is a collection of essays and poetry, available in print, digital, and audio-book.

Contact: smedlin8@gmail.com

Sean Avery Medlin's Presentations

Arizona/Southwest History

Artist Talk

Culture/Gender/Identity Studies

Music

Poetry

Storytelling

Song of the Unseen

With a Black population of just 5%, Arizona’s African Americans can feel unknown, unheard, and unseen. Growing up in the west valley of the cactus state, in the cities Avondale and Litchfield Park, poet Sean Avery Medlin often felt those exact ways. African American Arizonans have been described as “locked into an indiscernible status.” Both poetry and rap music have provided mediums in which to tell stories, specifically Medlin’s story, as an “indiscernible” in the 48th state. In this presentation, Medlin will use Arizona’s Black musical and literary histories to illustrate the ways that Black art in Arizona flourishes for the sake of expression, and survival.