Cherryl Aldave is a freelance multi-media hip hop, pop culture, race and social justice journalist. She is also a soundtrack consultant, researcher, filmmaker and author. Aldave has written for Wax Poetics, Scratch, Elemental, Rime, Insomniac, HipHopDX, and Yes! Weekly, among other journals. Her work also appears in Wax Poetics Anthology, Bandana Republic, and The Quotable Rebel. Born in the Philippines to an African-American mother, a US Marine, and to a Filipino father who is a musician, Aldave was raised in NC and attended the NC School of Science and Mathematics and UNC Chapel Hill. She says, "As part of the hip hop generation, I've engrossed myself in various styles of hip hop music, dress, dance, thought and vernacular for over three decades." As a DJ at WXYC in Chapel Hill, she also worked on a weekend mix show, The New Science Experience. Aldave published NC's first Hip Hop zine, Headz, growing the publication from a circulation of 1000 quarterly issues to 25,000 within two years. She has been a freelance writer since 2001 and recently completed a memoir as well as a nonfiction book, Fear of a Black Vagina, which chronicles the systematic destruction of black women and black people around the world. This program is funded in part by the NC Arts Council’s Grassroots Arts Program through the Iredell Arts Council.