AMYRA is a musician, author, director and Harlem native, seamlessly transcending genre and medium. She believes the art of listening and honest conversation are the primary tools for lasting change. Her aim is to empower communities to believe in the significance of their individual stories.

Poetry has allowed Amyra to summon her own reality time and time again as she faced the intricate violence of being raised in New York City’s Foster Care System. Her work, often autobiographical, tends to generational trauma, Black liberation and communal healing. In honoring the wonder and terror of her own history, she invites us to reckon with our own.

Freedom, We Sing, Flying Eye 2020,  León’s debut picture book, is endorsed by Amnesty International and was shortlisted for the Waterstones Book Prize, UKLA Book Awards, North Somerset Teachers Book Awards and nominated for the Kate Greenaway Medal. Illustrated by the wonder that is Molly Mendoza.  Concrete Kids, Penguin Teen 2020, León’s debut YA poetry collection was shortlisted for the Goddard CBC Social Justice Prize and named a YALSA Amazing Audiobook for Young Adults and received starred reviews from Kirkus Review, Booklist and School Library Journal. Both publications are currently being taught in schools throughout the United States and United Kingdom. León’s second picture book, Darling, will be published via Candlewick in 2023, illustrated by Cathy Ann Johnson. 

Celebrated in the NAACP Image Award nominated series PBS: American Masters In the Making, Strange Grace: The Life and Art of Amyra León is an intimate look into the intersections of Amyra’s multidisciplinary practice and her remarkable journey of becoming.

WITNESS , Amyra’s debut album, is an experimental soul record that serves as a hymn and a battlecry, an ode to the Harlem that raised her. 

She has performed everywhere from the back corners of bars in New York and London to being on the frontlines of marches against injustice. She has toured throughout the United States and Europe countless times and has performed at Lincoln Center, BAM, Brooklyn Public Library, The Apollo Cafe, TEDx and more. She has shared stages with Common, Nikki Giovanni, Carrie Mae Weems, Brian Jackson, Hellogoodbye, and more. 

Amyra composed Una Mujer Derramada in collaboration with Sivan Eldar commissioned by and performed with Lisbon's Gulbenkian Orchestra, the Montpellier National Opera, and the Paris Chamber Orchestra. Amyra was honored to perform the composition as the sole vocalist with all three orchestras. 

She is the inaugural recipient of the Battersea Arts Centre Phoenix Award which led to the 2019 London premiere of her debut play VASELINE, co-commissioned by Arts Council England. VASELINE will return to the stage in 2023.