Today’s Women Warriors in Education honoree is Monice Mitchell Simms, Novel Adapter-Co-screenwriter, BET+ (BET Networks, a subsidiary of ViacomCBS, Inc).
Mrs. Mitchell Simms is an award-winning author, poet, playwright and social-anthropologist, who employs her words across multiple platforms to educate and inspire audiences to activate their voices and agency on issues that matter.
Monice penned her first production, “Stop the Great War,” when she was a junior at Martin Luther King Senior High (MLK High) in Detroit MI. In “Stop the Great War” Mitchell Simms challenged her audiences to hear the voices of Black youth whose lives were negatively impacted by the social, economic and political forces that shaped the late 1980’s early 1990’s urban experience in America. While an undergraduate at Wayne State University, she reproduced “Stop the Great War” which would go on to be recognized as a Lorraine’s Hansberry finalist in the American College Theatre Festival and produced as a film for public television on Barden Cable Vision.
Grounded in a similar social-anthropological framework that guided her work with “Stop the Great War,” Mitchell Simms has written, produced and directed movies that speak to lived experiences of Black people in America: two award-winning films, “Carmin’s Choice” and “Rain” for Showtime; and recently adapted feature screenplay “Redeemed” for BET+.
Wayne State University, Wayne State University Teacher Education Division, and Wayne State University College of Education celebrates Mrs. Monice Mitchell Simms on her commitment to using her creative genius to tell stories that lift up the voices of Black people
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