Tonya Ingram

Ingram was a graduate of New York University and Otis College of Art and Design.[1]

While at NYU, Ingram performed on the school's poetry slam team, which won the 2013 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational. Ingram founded the team alongside Eric Silver, Matthew Sparacino, and Safia Elhillo. They were coached by Mahogany Browne.[6][7]

Nuyorican Poets Cafe, which Ingram frequently performed at.

Ingram's writing was often about Black feminism and living with Lupus and kidney failure.[8][9][10]

Ingram performed at the Nuyorican Poets Café, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and Lexus Verses and Flow's variety show.[11][12][13]

Her work was featured in the 2021 Madewell "What Are You Made Of? Creatives of Color" campaign,[14] Hallmark's Mahogany Writing Community and card brand,[15] MIGA Swimwear,[16] The New York Times,[17] To Write Love on Her Arms,[18] and Hello Giggles.[19]

TWLOHA, Mental Health & Recovery organization Ingram wrote for.

Ingram was the curator of Poetry in Color Live! at Los Angeles County Museum of Art.[1]

In addition to poetry, Ingram wrote and contributed to high-profile journalistic pieces on wasted organ donations, the dysfunction of the American healthcare system, the impact of COVID-19 on disabled people, and other disability rights issues.[9][20][21] In 2021, she testified as a patient on the kidney transplant waitlist on a House of Representatives hearing regarding the organ transplant system.[1][22][23]

In 2020, Ingram learned to surf through Color the Water and AdventureCrew, BIPOC surfing communities, and attended a surf retreat in Nicaragua.[24][1]

In 2019, at age 27, Ingram posted on Instagram looking for a living person willing to become her kidney-donor. The organ procurement system (OPS) in the United States, run by the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), as of 2019, failed to recover around 28,000 organs a year. Utilizing journalism, Ingram and writer and organ-recipient, Kendall Ciesemier, asked the government to hold the organizations involved in OPS accountable, believing this would result in Ingram receiving a kidney. Ingram wrote an opinion essay; appeared in a government video; wrote letters to members of the Biden administration, including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (C.M.S.) administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure and the head of the Health Resources and Services Administration, Carole Johnson; worked with members of Congress, including Representative Katie Porter; and even testified before the House Oversight Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy in May 2021. [9][25][26][27]

Ingram told the House Oversight Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy that she would die without the federal government's urgent action. A year and a half later, on Dec. 30, 2022, Ingram died of complications from kidney failure.[25]

In 2022, Ingram was one of 12,000 people on waiting lists who died or became too sick to receive a transplant.[28]

Ingram's friend and fellow journalist, Kendall Ciesemier, commented on future potential for intervention in the organ procurement system by the American government: [25][29]

"The solution already has bipartisan support and would be both cost-saving and lifesaving. The C.M.S. has projected that holding these government contractors accountable would save more than 7,000 lives a year — translating to $1 billion saved in forgone dialysis. If the 28,000 organs that go to waste each year were recovered and transplanted, the wait for livers and lungs could disappear within just two years...

Sometimes I wonder if the problem doesn't get solved because so many of the heroic advocates who square off against executives and their lobbyists have disappeared in sickness or in death. As someone born into illness, I've seen many of my young, sick friends die. It's always horrible, but Tonya's death was preventable. She ‌was the victim of a broken system, a system she tried so hard to change. Before too many others follow, Congress needs to hold the Biden administration to the bipartisan recommendations of the Senate Finance Committee: publish critical data, break up the national organ monopoly and replace the O.P.O.s whose failures hold patients' lives hostage.

Tonya did her part. Now it's on the Biden administration to finish the job."

• Growl and Snare, Penmanship Books, 2013[35]
• Another Black Girl Miracle, Not a Cult, 2018[36]
• How to Survive Today, Wild Awake Publishing, 2020[37]

• "On Praying to God While Taking the SAT Exam", Brave New Voices, 2011[38]
• "Thirteen", Intermedia Arts, 2013[39]
• "Unsolicited Advice (after Jeanann Verlee)", CUPSI New York City, 2013[40]
• "Isms", NPS Boston, 2013[41]
• "Khaleesi", NPS Boston, 2013[42]
• "I Am Twenty-Two", NPS Oakland, 2014[43]
• "Raise Up", The Kennedy Center, 2014[11]
• "Monster", NPS Oakland, 2015[44]
• "We Are Full", NPS Oakland, 2015[45]
• "Live", NPS Oakland, 2015[46]
• "Suicide", Da Poetry Lounge Slam, 2015[47]
• "An Open Letter to My Depression", BuzzFeed, 2015[48][49]
• "Seven Commandments", Sofar NYC, 2016[50]
• "I Am 24", Brooklyn Slam, 2016[51]
• "Dear Discouraged", To Write Love On Her Arms, 2016[52]
• "Until the Stars Collapse", Art Share, 2018[53]
• "Here is What Loneliness / Love Tells You", Los Angeles Theatre Center, 2018[54]
• "For the Next Lover", Los Angeles Theatre Center, 2018[55]
• "On Days You Miss Your Ex", Los Angeles Theatre Center, 2018[56]
• “how to be strong”, To Write Love On Her Arms, 2019[57]