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Mary E. Weems, Ph.D. is a poet, playwright, author, performer, and imagination-intellect theorist. She is a former Poet Laureate of Cleveland Heights (April 2007 \u2013 April 2009) and the first African American.

Dr. Weems is the author and/or co-editor of \xa0Cleveland Poetry Scenes: A Panorama & Anthology,\xa0Poetry Power\xa0,\xa0her educational text\xa0Public Education and the Imagination-Intellect: I Speak from the Wound in My Mouth, to name a few.

Dr.Weems work has\xa0appeared in numerous anthologies, most recently\xa0Go, Tell Michelle: African American Women Write to the New First Lady ,\xa0Boomer Girls,\xa0and\xa0Spirit and Flame: An Anthology of African American Poetry.

Dr. Weems won the Wick Chapbook Award for her collection\xa0white\xa0in 1996, and in 1997 her playAnother Way to Dance\xa0won the Chilcote award for The Most Innovative Play by an Ohio Playwright. Her most recent chapbook\xa0Tampon Class,\xa0is in its second printing.

Her play\xa0Closure\xa0is about the foreclosure crises told from the perspective of the objects left behind opened the season at Karamu, the oldest theater in the United States to showcase the work of African American playwrights, and her new workTruth Out\xa0which explores what happens when Sojourner Truth returns to the Unitarian Stone Church where she gave her \u201cAin\u2019t I a Woman\u201d speech in 1851, which is now the Department of Jobs and Family Services, just had a dramatic reading at the Cleveland Playhouse as part of its FusionFest.

It is my great pleasure to\xa0present to you my friend Dr. Mary E. Weems, join me as we experience... THE TAMPON CLASS.