Born in New York City to parents of Cuban and Jamaican descent and raised in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York, Aja Monet Bacquie began writing poems when she was eight or nine years old. While attending Baruch College Campus High School, she performed spoken-word for school talent shows. Around this time, Monet joined Urban Word NYC—a non-profit organization that offers guidance and public platforms to young writers, particularly those of color—and became a part of a community of aspiring urban writers.

Aja Monet’s lyrical poems explore gender, race, migration and spirituality. In 2018, her first full collection of poetry, My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter, was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work. She read the title poem at the national Women’s March on Washington DC in 2017 to commemorate women of the Diaspora. In 2019, she was awarded the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Award for Poetry for her cultural organizing work in South Florida. She has collaborated with poet and musician Saul Williams on the book Chorus, an anthem of a new generation of poets and won the legendary Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam poetry award title in 2007.