Bio

Toni Bee is a poet, cultural leader, program curator, and arts educator whose work engages poetry, visual art, history, and community practice. She was a Teaching Fellow at GrubStreet (2024–2025) and was featured in August 2025 on GBH’s Rooted, reflecting her growing role as a public-facing voice in Boston’s arts and cultural landscape.

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She is the founder of Poets in the Garden, an interdisciplinary arts series that activates public and historic spaces—including the Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters —through poetry and site-based programming.  Her work centers the creation of meaningful literary arts experiences that connect the audience to place, story, and one another.

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A long-standing facilitator with Writers Without Margins, she leads writing workshops in community-centered spaces across Boston and Cambridge and hosts the Second Thursday Poetry Reading Series at The Menino Art Center in Hyde Park, MA.

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Bee’s work as a teaching artist includes collaborations with the Boch Center, and workshops with organizations such as the International Women's Writing Guild. As a performer, she has been featured at venues including the Cantab Lounge, Lizard Lounge, Grolier Poetry Book Shop, The New England Poetry Club, and the Massachusetts Poetry Festival. 

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Her writing appears in Boog City and Best Indie Lit New England, and she is co-author of the article ”Reading and teaching Phillis Wheatley Peters in Boston”, published in the journal Early American Literature.

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Toni served as the inaugural Poetry Ambassador for the City of Cambridge (2016) and as Cambridge Poet Populist (2011–2013). Across her work Tony is committed to expanding access to the arts and building programs that engage diverse communities through language history and creative expression