Chinaka Hodge

Chinaka Hodge is a poet, educator, playwright, and screenwriter based in Oakland, California. She is the creator of the TV Series "Ironheart" in the Marvel Universe.

Hodge graduated from New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, where she served as the student speaker at the 174th Commencement exercise. She continued her education at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, where she was awarded the Annenberg Fellowship and earned an MFA in writing for film and television. Hodge received the San Francisco Foundation's Phelan Literary Award for emerging Bay Area talent and completed an artist residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Marin, California. She was also a Sundance Feature Film Lab fellow for her script, "700th & Int'l," and participated as a fellow at the Cave Canem summer retreat.

Hodge has held various roles at Youth Speaks and The Living Word Project, organizations recognized for their contributions to literary arts and youth development. Her positions have included program director, associate artistic director, teaching artist, and poet mentor. She has also worked with Urban Word NYC and Get Lit: Words Ignite in New York and Los Angeles, respectively. In addition to her work in education and writing, Hodge is a founding member of the hip-hop ensemble The Getback. Her poems, editorials, interviews, and prose have appeared in Newsweek, San Francisco Magazine, Believer Magazine, PBS, NPR, CNN, C-Span, and in two seasons of HBO's "Def Poetry."