About

Pacia Elaine Anderson has always had a fascination with words. As a child, she would spend hours writing, speaking, reading, and drawing as an early meditative practice that would serve as a precursor to her creative work as an adult; one which draws from the artistry inherent in language to connect, document, to make sense of the world around her, and to tell a good story.

Pacia Elaine's poetic work is a charismatic blend of rhyme, layered imagery, and fantasy, all of which are used to explore a diversity of  subject matter and co-create visceral, emotive experiences for readers and listeners alike. Pacia's visual work serves as a conduit for moving us to contemplation, and for channeling infinite possibilities of reshaping ideas, color, space, line, and the imagination to both remind and affirm the connectedness of and divinity in us all.

The written, spoken, visual, and teaching Word Artist’s professional work meets at the intersection of arts-learning and community development, with a focus on youth development and the reclamation of the cultural practices, traditions, and customs of the African Diaspora.

Pacia Elaine is an Urban Bush Women SLI alumna, a 2020 New Leaders Council-St. Louis alumna, and a founding member of the youth-based art camp Cherokee Street Reach. A graduate of the Regional Arts Commission’s Community Arts (CAT) Institute, Pacia now heads the Institute as its program lead. She is a past Creative Director of the St. Louis Brick City Poetry Festival and a current Missouri Regional Coordinator for the NEA-sponsored Poetry Out Loud youth recitation competition. In 2020, Pacia became the St. Louis Visionary Awards’ “Community Impact Artist” Honoree.

Pacia is a consulting artist and has served as a national workshop facilitator with Americans for the Arts’ Artists at the Community Development Table initiative. An artist deeply invested in the neighborhood where she lives, Pacia has played key roles in the development of the Gravois-Jefferson Historic Neighborhoods Plan, stewardship and development of Love Bank Park, and member of numerous neighborhood-based community initiatives in the neighborhoods that surround the Cherokee Street corridor. 

During his full tenure, Pacia Elaine served as Curation Assistant to inaugural St. Louis Poet Laureate Dr. Michael Castro. She has been a commissioned poet and writer for innumerable events, reading series, festivals, and conferences. Additionally, Pacia is a master teaching artist, having worked with several thousand youth in the St. Louis area in dozens of schools, community and recreational centers, homes, parks, and gathering spaces. She was a Springboard to Learning founding professional development facilitator for teaching artists in the Regional Arts' Commission's Teaching Artist Institute in 2018. She actively collaborates as a teaching artist, creative consultant, and community engagement facilitator with numerous academic, non-profit, civic, and community-based organizations and institutions, both locally and nationally. She firmly supports the youth development work of Good Journey Development Foundation, Your Words STL, UrbArts. Pacia has been a teaching artist with Springboard to Learning and COCA for many years. 

In 2016, Pacia released her first spoken word poetry album titled circa.ep. Her work has been published in Humans of St. Louis, Drumvoices Revue, Crossing the Divide, ArtsLink, and All the Art, among others. She has featured several times in partnerships with St. Louis Public Radio and NPR. She continues to write, speak, read, and draw and ride her bike wherever she can.