Daniëlle Zawadi

performing spoken word

Daniëlle Zawadi is mainly known for her spoken word performances, but above all else she is a prose writer. Her work is mostly about life in The Netherlands as someone from the ‘second generation’ as her family originally comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Zawadi means Present, it is her official name and in sharing her work she gives us as a present of her words about friendship, growing older, racism, feminism and self-acceptance.

At the age of thirteen she published her first novel Zoiets Noemen we Ruzie. In 2017 she won 3rd place at Kunstbende. In 2019 she was nominated to speak at TEDx Amsterdam. In 2020 she won the Unwanted Words BIPOC Voice Award as part of the 1st Queer & Feminist Awards with her ode to anti-racism and an ultimate middle finger to white supremacy reserved for members of Black, Indigenous and People of Colour communities.

She appears on word stages in The Hague and Rotterdam and has work published in De Optimist and Wintertuin’s Notulen van het Onzichtbare and Hard//Hoofd. She writes a column in Awatar and has been selected for the Slow Writing Lab 2021-2022. Daniëlle is part of the Poetry Circle 010 and she partook in Mensen Zeggen Dingen in Ekko and We The People… in De Melkweg, Amsterdam.

Her passion for word art has made her create her own platform: Het Zwarte Schaap – spoken word and poetry with the goal to contribute to the word art scene in The Hague and to give artists a platform where they can be heard. In 2020 the platform won the Audience Award of the Haagse C. She worked earlier with STET in the 2020 Let’s Open Up programme and in the Uitfestival 2020 in het Nationale Theater – Koninklijke Schouwburg.