This is My Autobiography

Jonida Beqo a.k.a Gypsee-Yo is a native of Tirana, Albania who has been finally pronounced as a "bonafide" Southern girl, after "doing time" in the Bible Belt for almost 9 years. She is currently a resident of Atlanta, Ga. In 2001 she founded Lighthouse Productions, an independent theater company that performs works that educate about and empower communities in crisis. In spring of 2004 she was recognized by the American College Theatre Festival and the Kennedy Center for the Arts with the DellArte Diversity Award for her work in her original one woman show Sinners and Saints; The Women I Know, an internationally performed and critically acclaimed play. She joined the spoken word/slam frontier in 2005, and is still loving every (3) minute(s) of it. As a slam poet she has been a member of the Atlanta/Java Monkey Slam Team at the National Poetry Slam in Austin, TX 2006-2007.She is the author of three critically acclaimed poetry books and several anthology features in her native tongue, and of four CDs and a DVD in yours. She continues to perform nationally and internationally and has been known to violate the prop rule by bringing her infant daughter up on the stage with her. Gypsee's main goal in life is "not to suck", and she believes that this is both a reasonable and potentially attainable goal.

In this video, Gypsee-Yo receives top marks for her performance at the Mocha Match poetry slam, February 2, 2008. She's a live cannon. She's a survivor.

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Entertainment

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• Gypsee-Yo
• poetry
• slam
• poem
• Mocha
• Match
• spoken
• word