Fueled By The Sun: How One Poet Turned Loss Into Lyricism

Sun Queen and her goddaughter, Ka'meya Ingram, at a Black History Month open mic at the Hill Museum of Arts in February 2023. Ingram's sweatshirt is part of Sun Queen's "Black Girls Are Sunshine" brand. Lucy Gellman File Photo.

When the poet Sun Queen lost a binder of work while transferring between colleges, she faced a writer’s worst nightmare: having to start from scratch. But she found the strength to rebuild, ultimately using the experience to jumpstart her publishing journey and inspire other writers and New Haveners in the process.

The author of It Happened Within The Sun and Let Your Light Shine Through: An Affirmation Journal, Queen is an activist, poet, writer and artist-entrepreneur shaped by her love for and work within New Haven’s creative and justice-oriented communities. Rooted in the belief that words are a conduit for change, she weaves narratives that challenge the status quo, inviting her readers to question, to feel, and ultimately act.

That work comes to her naturally: she is the co-founder of Black Lives Matter New Haven, the brain behind Black Girls Are Sunshine, and an organizer for the Unhoused Activists Community Team (U-Act), a coalition fighting for stronger rights for and protections of unhoused people in the city. She brings all of those different parts of herself to everything that she does.   

“My poetry is my protest,” she said in a recent interview at the Ives Main Branch of the New Haven Free Public Library. 

Sun Queen’s journey began in the city’s Newhallville neighborhood, where some of her family is still located. Growing up there was vibrant and deeply nourishing, she said, describing it as a kind of community garden teeming with life. Neighbors looked out for one another, porches were always open, and block parties brought the community together.

She credits several powerful Black women who poured into her during that time, including Pastor Margaret L. Thomas and a neighborhood small business owner who she knew and loved simply as “Ms. Lucy.”

Sun Queen leads protesters in a march calling for justice for Breonna Taylor, who was murdered by Louisville police, after a grand jury ruled not to charge the two officers in September 2020. Lucy Gellman File Photo.

“If I had to describe what it was like growing up in the Ville, it definitely was nourishing,” Queen said in an interview over the phone. “I definitely experienced a lot but it was definitely the place I learned to grow and be resilient.”

It gave her the creative drive on which she builds much of her work today. In 2001, Queen began her college journey at Delaware State University, where she studied until 2003 before taking time away from school. Determined to finish what she started, she later enrolled at the University of Bridgeport, where she ultimately earned her undergraduate degree.

Those years influenced her writing journey in ways she could not have imagined, she said. While transferring between schools in the early 2000s, Queen asked a friend to hold onto a notebook full of original writing. When it got lost, she worried that she might never publish or write again. 

But “I wanted to make it happen,” she said. She reached out to people, trying to find her way back into the creative process and the writing industry. She came across a female editor from Florida and soon after joined a writing group. When in 2012 she lost her brother, 19-year-old Christopher T. Fain, in a senseless act of gun violence, it spurred her to keep writing as an act of resistance, healing and activism.

“I’m fueled by my writing, and I’m fueled by the energy I give off,” she said.

When she started work on her 2019 book of poetry, It Happened Within the Sun, Queen faced obstacles ranging from expensive self-publishing costs to frustrating technical errors, like Amazon printing the wrong pages of her book and sending them back. But she kept going. The same resilience she learned growing up, from the women who raised her and the brother she lost, became her anchor. 

“I love seeing how my words connect to other people’s hearts,” Queen said.

Queen with a copy of It Happened Within the Sun. 

Six years after first publishing, her words are more than ink on paper: they are a mirror reflecting the many social systems that are broken and the ways that they let people down. In her work, she weaves narratives that identify and challenge the status quo, inviting her readers to do the same. She’s equally big on affirmation, using both her pen and the mic to lift others when she shares work.

A reader can see that in It Happened Within The Sun, as well as poetry Queen has performed and public art she’s taken part in across the city (more on that below). The book weaves together themes of survival, joy, healing, and identity, offering readers a mix of softness and strength in every verse.

Queen is also a dynamic speaker and spoken word artist, often invited to perform at community events. After she shares her words, she said, people regularly come up to her with open arms, letting her know just how much she’s spoken to them. For her, those moments where poetry meets purpose are the most uplifting of all.

New Haven Black Pride Founder Tim Mack, who first found Queen’s work and writing through social media, has seen that purpose in action. In a phone call Thursday afternoon, he praised her as a powerful voice and a “pillar in our community,” to whom he has turned many times over.

Since first connecting around New Haven Black Pride several years ago—”I just knew she was perfect,” he said—she’s become “my go to for everything I need in the community.”

Sun Queen performs at Artspace New Haven in April 2022. 

“She's very important to me,” he said, adding that he values the certainty and conviction of her words, and her ability to speak to the intersection of being Black and being LGBTQ+. “Being a queer man and having representation, it really does matter. Seeing how well spoken she is, how well educated she is … she provides me with a safe space.” 

Since publishing her book, Queen has continued to ground her work in community and healing. With Black Lives Matter New Haven, she has coordinated annual backpack drives and scholarship programs, while also bringing arts and culture into the city’s streets and onto its stages. She has held open mics in intimate, packed city museums and downtown storefronts, taught in art spaces and in the middle of intersections, there to drop knowledge when the city may need it most.

In November 2023, she performed with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra as it premiered Joel Thompson’s “breathe/burn: an elegy for solo violoncello and orchestra,” setting a precedent for poetry and spoken word in its concerts that the NHSO returned to last year. 

She’s also brought that work to U-Act, where she fights fiercely for racial and social justice, and to a community advisory board for Elm City COMPASS. On a given night, she might be out with unhoused activists on the New Haven Green, advocating for a city budget measure at the New Haven Board of Alders, or sharing her spoken word as a pathway to social justice.

Her advocacy is deeply connected to her writing, especially her belief in affirmation, which offers the same empathy and empowerment found in her poetry. In 2021, she published Let Your Light Shine Through, an affirmation journal meant to share that positive outlook with the community. 

“What you speak over your life is what you begin to believe,” she said. “Always remember your ‘why’ when you pursue something, because it gives you purpose.”

In a phone call last Friday, U-ACT’s Billy Bromage described Queen as someone whose essence is defined by her care for others. Through their work together, he said, he’s seen how powerful—and nurturing—her presence is. She’s constantly checking in on people, making sure they have what they need. She doesn’t judge. She just exists alongside them, actively listening to what they need.

“To me, Sun is somebody that, like, totally leads with love and compassion,” Bromage said. “That’s kind of the core of what Sun is about.”

He recalled her calm, steady presence during an encampment on the New Haven Green last fall, as a coalition of unhoused activists pitched tents to protest city sweeps of homeless encampments and the need for more safe, accessible, and consistent spaces for unhoused people to stay. During that time—and still—she was always right where she needed to be

To Bromage, her activism transcends any kind of expected boundaries, he said. Instead, he said, she blends with her poetry and artistry to create a way of living that is poetic.

“Her life is like a poem, as well [as] in her activism,” Bromage said.

This article comes from the 2025 cohort of the Youth Arts Journalism Initiative (YAJI). YAJI is a program in which New Haven, Hamden and West Haven Public Schools high school students pitch, write, edit and publish articles through the Arts Paper. This year, YAJI advisors include Arts Paper Editor Lucy Gellman and reporter and YAJI alum Abiba Biao. Mya DeBerry was the Arts Paper's 2025 New Haven Academy intern and is now a rising senior at New Haven Academy.