Raised in Oklahoma, Anna Weaver lives in North Carolina with her two daughters. Since 2011 she’s been a regular at Triangle-area open mics and arts festivals, as well as a catch-as-can gig reading poetry written on demand at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences.

Every second Sunday she hosts an open mic for poets, musicians, and storytellers—called Tongue & Groove—in downtown Raleigh.

Anna’s poems have appeared in print journals and anthologies, online zines, civic art installations, and coffee bags (no, really). She’s served as coach for North Carolina’s Poetry Out Loud champion since 2019.

Anna writes as a former soldier in the US Army Reserve, a mind solidly imprinted by 20 years under the big skies of Oklahoma, and a woman “with loyalties scattered over the landscape” (to borrow from Marge Piercy). Not necessarily in that order.

If you ask Google, Anna is America’s only open mic tourist. (Plenty of poets tour. She tourists. It’s different.) She aims to read—and listen and scope more tips for hosts, organizers, and performers—in all 50 states.

So far she’s up to 39—including events in Raleigh, Durham, Chicago, Savannah, Atlanta, Nashville, Las Vegas, New York City, Charleston, Oakland, Norfolk, Kansas City, Texas, Oklahoma, Maryland, Los Angeles, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New Jersey, Maine (which totally counts even though no one else showed up), Ohio, Florida, West Virginia, Indiana, Kentucky, Hawaii (times 2), Seattle, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota, Arizona, Alabama, Colorado (times 2), Wyoming, Delaware, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, Michigan, and New Mexico (blog forthcoming). Plus the District of Columbia, just for good measure.

Anna believes that open mic might just save the world.