Donte Collins (butch-queen; they/them; b. Chicago Heights, 1996) is a neurodivergent afro-surrealist blues poet, playwright and educator named the Inaugural Youth Poet Laureate of Saint Paul, Minnesota. Collins is a co-curator and core creative collaborator of side by side by side by, (2026) an emerging performance work that embodies Black life as method.

Collins writes from inside the improvisational inheritance of Black radical thought, where jazz, Afro-surrealism, and neo-expressionism meet as one continuous ground, where the oral tradition is that ground’s root grammar and the blues a juke joint for the spirit.

Collins is the author of Autopsy (Button Poetry, 2017), a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award, and an alum of TruArtSpeaks, an arts and culture organization cultivating literacy, leadership, and social justice through the study and application of Spoken Word and Hip Hop culture. They are grateful to have received fellowships, scholarships, and awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Adroit Journal, the McKnight Foundation, the National Urban League, the Dramatist Guild Foundation, and elsewhere. They are a recipient of the 2024 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship for theatre, spoken word, and performance. These fellowships have sustained their teaching internationally, across the country and in the Twin Cities where they currently live.