To some I am a triple minority. I am Black, I am a woman, and I am Muslim. Do not feel sorry for me; I consider myself a triple threat. -- Aliyah Ansari

Aliyah Ansari was born and raised in Brownsville, Brooklyn. She is the third child of eight, seven girls and one boy. Growing up in a rough part of Brooklyn, she knows what it is like to struggle day to day. Through these struggles emerged her poetry. At the tender age of nine, she fell into a deep depression and for such a young age, thoughts of suicide ran through her mind. After contemplating taking her life, she sat down in her room and began to write what was to be her first poem, and as they say the rest is history. Writing allowed her to purge her pain and place it down on paper, and helped her navigate through her depression.

The thought of performing her poetry never occurred to her until she was in her sophomore year of high school. "The movie Slam changed my life", Aliyah recalls. "I never thought that poetry could be performed in that way until I saw Saul Williams, it was so raw, so powerful, I realized then that I wanted to do that". She began performing her poetry at the age of sixteen and has made the semi-finals of the Urban Word Teen poetry Slam for four consecutive years. Aliyah has performed at venues such as Bowery Poetry Club, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Brooklyn Academy of Music and New York's 40/40 Club, as well as at community events in Brooklyn. She has also performed in Blackout Arts Collective's eight month series Art or Die, and was enrolled in Blackout's Lyrics on Lockdown class at The New York University Gallatin School of Individualized Study. This course gave Aliyah the opportunity to work with students at Rikers Island Academy, whom she visited weekly for half the semester as a part of her coursework. Her poetry has been included in the recently released One Mic: A Lyrics on Lockdown Anthology 2004-2008. She joined AMP LLC to refine her craft. Her next step is to become a member of a New York Slam team, and begin her journey towards her first book project. Aliyah is pursuing her Bachelor's Degree in Archeological Anthropology at New York University.