Syd Stewart is a published poet, performance poet, actor, and filmmaker. Stewart was a featured poet in the documentary Hughes’ Dream Harlem, on BET’s Lyric Café, and starred in HBO’s feature film, Everyday People. She has performed her work on radio, community events, museums, colleges, and universities, including personal tributes to Cicely Tyson and Dr. Maya Angelou, who dubbed her “a fine poet.” She has produced events for teens and young adults for the Los Angeles Unified School District, the City of LA, and the City of New York. She performed with her live band for DEF Poetry at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and now regularly performs in New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas. Most recently, Stewart’s work was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts’ 50th Anniversary and for New York Stage and Film’s Filmmaker Fellowship.
Stewart is a member of the service-oriented sorority Delta Sigma Theta and is the Founder and Executive Director of Better Youth, Inc., a non-profit organization that uses poetry and media arts to equip people with creative confidence. She is also a volunteer educator for GirlUp, a teen empowerment initiative of The United Nations Foundation.
Stewart has been featured in The New York Times, Variety, and People magazine. She is a 2017 New York Stage and Film Fellow, 2017 Austin Film Festival Second Rounder, 2017 ScreenCraft Quarterfinalist, and 2016 Universal Pictures Emerging Writers Semifinalist. Her mentors include famed filmmaker F. Gary Gray and acclaimed author Walter Mosley.