We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Gina Carrillo a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Gina, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.
I jumped out of an airplane! I recited my Poem Black Widow from thousands of feet in the air. My Tandem Coach was nicknamed Spidey, he had Spider-Man attire on and I came dressed in my red and black too. He recently passed away due to a tragic skydiving accident and he was definitely a hero!
The risk I took jumping into the sunny sky with one of my friends who jumped by my side was because of her Birthday she had asked if I wanted to go. It was on my bucket list and after everything I went through I started knocking things off that list. I literally jumped with joy at the opportunity to go and my best friend Heather joined us to take pictures from the ground.
I decided that I wanted to recite my Poem while I was gliding through the clouds. This inspired Spidey who later brought a friend to a show to see me Perform yet I had missed that one!
When you take a risk and go after what you want to do in life you can live with no regrets!!
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?
Let me introduce myself, I am Gina Carrillo, aka Black Widow and I am a Spoken Word Artist from Franklin,TN.
The Creator of The Prodigal Poets Poetry Collective and
Author of Kaleidoscope & Poets United, which can be found on Amazon.
My writings are of Love, Loss, Strength & Resilience. About overcoming deaths, beating cancer, and domestic violence
I enjoy Performing at Shows and events and also can do Paint Parties that include Poetry!
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
My social media has been completely through my hard work with networking and connecting. I’ve not paid for any promotion or marketing. I love meeting new Artists and I try to go to any event which can be, Poetry Shows, Open Mics, Art events or even Comedy shows. Before and after the show I’ll introduce myself and get to know the audience as well. After I’ve performed at a show, I’ll bring my books and merch that can be purchased there as well. I curated my Facebook, Instagram, and Tik Tok to include brilliantly creative artists that will inspire and motivate me to keep at it!
Poets are always tagging me in picture prompts or word prompts and asking me to be included in Poetry Anthology Books. It was always my dream to be a Spoken Word Artist and publish a Book. I now have Kaleidoscope and Poets United Books and have been Published in over 30 Anthology books!
If you want to build up your presence online I’d suggest really getting out there and publicly speaking so others can find and follow you and what you do too!!
We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.
Franchesa Kirkpatrick has now taken over the Prodigal Poets as I recently moved to Spain! We met at a Poetry open mic in East Nashville. She is an amazing Performer and goes by Cat-Woman! We both love to dress up in costumes for our poetry pieces!
She is now managing the Event Calendar for Middle Tennessee open mics with the help of Epifany! If you want an event on the Calendar just let them know! I started performing around 2020 and realized that we needed to see what events are on what day. I also started promoting and marketing with showcasing the event flyers!
The Poetry Community is warm and welcoming there and if you’re in the area please check out a show!
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @blackwidowpoet
- Facebook: Gina Carrillo
- Other: Tik tok-@blackwidowpoet
Image Credits
Photography by Heather Waterman & Samantha Lyons