Crystal C. Mercer is an Afro-Creative, Textile Artist, Actor, Activist, Poet and Author of A Love Story Waiting to Happen (Butterfly Typeface, 2018), Creative Director of Columbus Creative Arts + Activism, and Designer and Lead Merchant of Mercer Textile Mercantile. She fuses arts and activism by using theatre and textiles to tell social justice narratives, through merchandising and storytelling, with an emphasis on uplifting voices of color and making marginalized populations visible.

Crystal is the recipient of grants from PEN America and the Dramatist Guild Foundation, which help her continue her charge as a storyteller and a keeper of the culture. She is a 2019 graduate of the Clinton School of Public Service (MPS) and completed her capstone and an international public service project in Accra, Ghana. She was emcee of the 2017 Women’s March for Arkansas and regularly commands the stage as she reads her poetry in venues such as the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame.

In her first children’s book, From Cotton to Silk: The Magic of Black Hair, her expertise in sewing and textiles are on full display as its pages reveal 467 hours of hand-stitching.

Read more about her work in Women Make Arkansas: Conversations with 50 Creatives.

Find her at crystalcmercer.com and mercertextilemercantile.com.