Jacquese Armstrong

About Me

Jacquese Armstrong is always thinking creatively.

Jacquese, author of birthing yourself naturally: motivational reflections on a mental health journey (2022) and blues legacy (Broadside Lotus Press, 2019), was the recipient of the 2019 Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award and 2015 Ambassador Award from the State of New Jersey Governor’s Council on Mental Health Stigma for promoting wellness and recovery and reducing stigma through the arts.

She served as a 2022 Black Fire—This Time Anthology Summer Fellow and has been a cast member of TMI Project’s storytelling performances Black Stories Matter: Every Word Spoken and Alone Together stories of COVID-19 in quarantine.

Her work has been published in the Torch Literary, MAD in America, midnight & indigo, Ourselves Black, Stellium and others.

Jacquese began creating self-care and mental wellness workshops through a creative lens to first help herself heal and then her peer community at the wellness center she attended. Later, she incorporated the workshops into her role as Coordinator for the NAMI NJ Dara Axelrod Expressive Arts Network, where the workshops were offered to any group in the New Jersey area on an appointment basis.

After the pandemic, the workshops were incorporated into a monthly virtual cafe.

Presently, Jacquese is looking for publishers for her memoir in essays, fabricating a home 'cause you never had one (a mental health/black history memoir) and her memoir in poems, survival as an act of resistance.

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