Mwende Katwiwa

Mwende Katwiwa, who performs under the name FreeQuency, is a Kenyan-American slam poet, community organizer, and activist. Their poems address issues of identity, emotion, racism, colonialism, and police brutality in the United States. They live in New Orleans.

They won the 2018 Women of the World Poetry Slam. At the poetry slam, Katwiwa performed "Dear White People" and "The Gospel of Colonization." Katwiwa also placed at both the 2015 and 2016 Individual World Poetry Slam. Katwiwa is part of the New Orleans chapter of BYP100 and is involved with youth organizing. For example, they helped organize a protest march in 2014 regarding the killing of Michael Brown by police. Although they were primarily involved with in-person organizing, they also used the social media site Tumblr to promote the protest.

Katwiwa is genderqueer and uses they/them pronouns.