Jani Rose is a Nuyorican poet, artist, activist, educator, cultural organizer, and curator, born in Spanish Harlem and raised in the Bronx during the harsh, creative era from the 70s to the 90s. At the age of 11, she was recruited for academic training by Prep for Prep, and transplanted from the NYC public school system of the Bx to the progressive, experimental Manhattan private school, Walden Lincoln, which would become the Trevor Day School. There, at the age of 15, she began a career in theater arts as a member of S.T.A.R. Theater, a workshop based theater company hosted by Mount Sinai Medical Center for the purpose of communicating with young people on such topics as HIV/AIDS, Stds/Stis, sexuality, and peer pressure. As a member of S.T.A.R. she collaborated with Gay Men’s Health Crisis, Harvey Milk School, and ACT UP to take to the streets to fight for LGBTQIA rights to health and liberty. She began her journey as a poet at the age of 7, would attend workshops at the New School at the age of 17, leading to her first reading at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe for the first time in 1993. 

A lifelong learner, Jani Rose has enjoyed honing her craft, workshopping as a Fellow of The Acentos Poetry Foundation, Pink Door Writers, and VONA: Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation. As a former decade long member of Capicu Culture she co-founded and co-directed the Capicu School of Poetic Arts, also known as La Sopa; together they developed and facilitated the creative workshop series at Boricua College, the Loisaida Center, and the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. 

She is best known as a Nuyorican Poet having hosted and performed countless events at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Capicu People's Open Mic, Bowery Poetry Club, La Marqueta, Momma’s Hip-Hop Kitchen, Poet’s House, the NYC Poetry Festival on Governors Island, Camaradas El Barrio, The Schomburg, and a great number of other social, cultural and academic organizations, and global live-streams.  As a community organizer she has curated inter-generational panel discussions, facilitated conversations on safe spaces, and hosted events designed to create awareness and justice on such topics as equity for the Puerto Rican, African, and indigenous diaspora, LGBTQIA and BIPOC, promulgating the arts and education as a means for self actualization and social justice. 

For the past 5 years Jani Rose has pulled from her 25 years of experience as a mother of 4 to support thousands of families, for the Department of Education. Jani Rose writes to find the part of you that lives in her, the part of her that lives in you. Her work can be found in several online anthologies, videos, and in The Breakbeat Poets, Vol. 4 LatiNext Edition, released in April 2020. 

Jani Rose is currently collaborating with the Miguelabration Committee in the creation of a series of events and anthologies to celebrate one of her mentors, the recently transitioned principal founder of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Miguel Algarin. She is an annual collaborator of Oye! Group’s Summer Arts Festival, creating handmade poetry journals and facilitating poetry workshops with the children in attendance at Maria Hernandez Park on August 21st. She is part of an innovative collaboration with XRE - Extended Reality Ensemble, in the creation of a multi-sensory, multidimensional, multi-disciplinary global arts extravaganza from September 8th to September 12th, Ars Electronica Festival Garden NYC 2021 at Culture Lab LIC, the Plaxall Gallery.