Malessia Lakeraj

Born and raised in Jersey City, NJ, she was a writer from an urban city. A 15 year old, academic scholar who attends University Charter School. Born into a family of 4 children, including herself. She is the second to youngest out of her siblings. Her passion for writing grew by writing her first poem to her first love. This ignited a passion within her, since she claimed to never be good with words verbally but on paper, she could talk for hours. She says, she writes what she is going through, if she has witnessed something, or something that inspires her. As her passion grew so did the pictures she created with words. She is such an optimistic and daring individual, who takes risk on a daily to get what she wants. Malessia was always a painter of words, a painter of what society painted itself to her. Allowing herself to live and be vulnerable in her work is what made it unique. Her work has been published in her school's newspaper as well as featured on Instagram.