Avery Chatmon

Avery is a literary and visual artist in poetry, recycled materials, photography, and installation. She creates in response to the subjects of love, the lives of Black women in America, nature, the Christian faith, and the tension and harmony between each.

 

Born and raised in Duval County (Jacksonville, FL) to a close-knit family of educators and art lovers, Avery was immersed in community, education, and the arts. When she was eight years old, she fell in love with military aviation and set her sights on becoming a fighter pilot via the United States Air Force Academy. She remained interested in exploring and creating literary and visual art throughout her adolescence. 

 

Avery graduated from the Academy in 2019 with a Bachelor of Science in English. After commissioning into the Air Force, she held various positions as an Acquisitions Project Officer at Los Angeles Air Force Base (now LA Space Force Base). While serving in LA, she was selected to attend graduate school at CUNY’s City College of New York graduating in 2023 with a MA in Language and Literacy. While at CUNY, she was awarded a grant to explore the relationship between local community literacy and Black women’s iconography at a residency with Los Angeles’s Experimentally Structured Museum of Art (ESMoA). She was a featured poet for the LA County Museum of Art’s 2022 Poetry in Color Slam.

 

Avery is an active duty Air Force officer who teaches reading and composition at the U.S. Air Force Academy Preparatory School. She is passionate about literary and visual arts, creating art in and for community, and literacy advocacy. 

 

She lives wherever her next military assignment takes her but prefers to be warm, coastal, and near family. Avery loves to run fast and read slowly.