Kleaver Cruz from Uptown, NYC is a Black queer Dominican-American creative, writer and educator. Kleaver is the creator of The Black Joy Project, an affirmation that Black joy is resistance. Kleaver is an alum of the VONA/Voices of Our Nation Foundation’s Emerging Writer’s Non-Fiction and Kenyon Review Writer’s Fiction Workshops. Kleaver is also a member of We Are All Dominican–A U.S.-based grassroots collective that works in solidarity with movements led by Dominicans of Haitian descent fighting for inclusion and citizenship rights in the Dominican Republic. They believe in the power of words as the means to write the stories that did not exist when They needed them the most.