Syd is a published performance poet, actor and filmmaker. Notably, Stewart was a featured poet in the documentary Hughes’ Dream Harlem, on BET’s Lyric Café and starred in HBO’s feature film, Everyday People.
Stewart has performed her work on various radio stations, at community events, for museums, colleges and universities including personal tributes to Cicely Tyson and Dr. Maya Angelou, who dubbed her “a fine poet”. She has produced events for teens and young adults for Los Angeles Unified School District, The City of LA, and The City of New York. She has performed with her live band notably for DEF Poetry at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Rush Arts Gallery, and now regularly performs in New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas. In 2015, Stewart’s work was selected by the National Endowment For The Arts’ 50th Anniversary and for New York Stage and Film’s Filmmaker Fellowship. She was recently staffed on season one of Johnson, a television dramedy produced by Cedric The Entertainer.
A former music executive for BMI and EMI Music Publishing, Stewart is a member of the service-oriented sorority Delta Sigma Theta, is the Founder and Executive Director of Better Youth, Inc., a non-profit organization that uses mentoring and media arts to equip foster and community youth with creative confidence. She is writing and directing a short film inspired by her transgender sisterfriend called Born Again.
Stewart’s collection of poems, A Rock and a Hard Place (iUniverse, 2010) was self-published and her second book of poetry, Babylon Graffiti (Zeitgeist Press 2018) was well received. She has featured in The New York Times, Variety, and People magazine. She has published works in the following publications: Zone, Obsidian III: Literature in the African Diaspora, African Voices, Rolling Out, The Lasting Joy, America at the Millennium, Signifyin’ Harlem, and Under a Quicksilver Moon. Notably, Syd is a 2021 BlackList/Macro/WB Screenwriter Finalist, 2020 BIPOC Sci-Fi Fellow, 2019 Indie Memphis/Barry Jenkins Black Filmmaker Fellow, 2017 New York Stage and Film filmmaker Fellow, and Austin Film Festival Second Rounder. Her mentors include famed filmmaker F. Stewart’s second book of poetry, Babylon Graffiti, is published by Zeitgeist Press. She has featured in The New York Times, Variety, and People magazine. She has published works in the following publications: Zone, Obsidian III: Literature in the African Diaspora, African Voices, Rolling Out, The Lasting Joy, America at the Millennium, Signifyin’ Harlem, and Under a Quicksilver Moon. Syd is a 2020 Justice For My Sister BIPOC Sci-Fi Filmmaker Fellow, a 2019 Indie Memphis/Black Creators Forum Filmmaker Fellow, and a 2017 New York Stage and Film Filmmaker Fellow. Her mentors include famed filmmaker F. Gary Gray and acclaimed author Walter Mosley.
