Chantay "Legacy" Leonard, 30, is a Detroit native, writer, performance poet, and activist.  Her literary work has been featured in Stanford University's "Black Arts Quarterly,” Poetry Slam Inc.'s. “Estrology", "The Bandana Republic" and other publications and stage productions.  She appeared in the international, critically acclaimed documentary "Shrinking Cities" exhibited at MOCAD and The Cranbrook Art Museum in the US, and other museums in Germany, Italy, Britain, Japan and other sites.  In 2009, she featured in the staged reading of “The Revolution’s In The Ladies Room” produced by Jessica Care Moore. 

As a spoken word artist, she has commanded stages with poetic icons The Last Poets, Amiri Baraka, Aurora Harris, Khary Kimani Turner, Jessica Care Moore, and others.  She has performed at numerous colleges and universities, festivals, and showcases spanning from New York’s Bowery Poetry Club to California’s University of Santa Barbara. 

Chantay is one of the founding members of the literary and performance group, Black Ink Collective and is the Vice President of Strange Fruits, Inc. a national all woman non-profit arts and performance collective.  She has traveled around the country with Hip-Poe-Tics, a lecture and performance activism series, which teaches college and university students how to organize and use art to aspire to activism.  She is currently working on her first fiction project.  I Have Come Forth By Day is her first collection of poems.