Contributor Bios
Poets
Derrick Austin is a graduate of the University of Tampa with a BA in English and Writing. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, storySouth, Lambda Literary, Movingpoem.com, Relief: A Christian Literary Expression, receiving an Editor’s Choice for Poetry, The Sigma Tau Delta Rectangle, Ganymede Unfinished, and Poets for Living Waters. He received an honorable mention in the 2009 International Reginald Shepherd Memorial Poetry Prize contest and is a runner up for the Robinson Prize sponsored by the University of Houston.
Corrina Bain is a genderqueer writer-performer. He has worked at a rape crisis hotline, a detox ward, an abortion clinic, and as a volunteer educator responding to the HIV/AIDS crisis in Mozambique. A former member of multiple slam teams, he was showcased on Final's Stage at the National Poetry Slam in 2004. He has performed alongside luminaries including Dorothy Allison, Patricia Smith, Jim Carroll, Tobias Wolff, Nick Flynn, and Paul Muldoon. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals including decomP, killauthor, PANK, The Nervous Breakdown, theRumpus.net, and Union Station Magazine. Currently, he is part of the staff of the louderARTS project, and lives in Brooklyn.
Anis Mojgani is an international poetry slam champion, a two-time national poetry slam champion and a National Book Award nominee. His work has appeared in RATTLE, The Legendary, and Radius, as well as on HBO and NPR. He is the author of two poetry collections published by Write Bloody Publishing: Over the Anvil We Stretch and The Feather Room. He currently resides with his wife in a small home on the east side of Austin, Texas.
Rachelle Cruz is from Hayward, CA. She has taught creative writing, poetry, and performance to young people in New York City, the Bay Area and Southern California. She hosts “The Blood-Jet Writing Hour,” an online poetics radio program. Her work has appeared in KCET's "Departures" series, Lantern Review, TAYO Magazine, Kweli Journal, and Strange Cargo: An Emerging Voices Anthology. Her poems are forthcoming in A Face to Meet the Faces: A Persona Poem Anthology. An Emerging Voices Fellow, a Kundiman Fellow, and a VONA participant, she lives and writes poems in Riverside, CA.
Weston Cutter's from Minnesota, teaches at the University of St. Francis in Fort Wayne, IN, is the author of You'd Be a Stranger, Too, and the editor of Corduroy Books.
Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a poet and a photographer. She is the author of Miracle Arrhythmia (Willow Books), The Requited Distance (Sheep Meadow Press), and Mule & Pear (New Issues Poetry & Prose). Currently, Griffiths teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College.
Geoff Kagan Trenchard’s poems have been published in numerous journals including Word Riot, The Nervous Breakdown, The Worcester Review, SOFTBLOW, and Pemmican. He has received endowments from the National Performance Network, Dance Theater Workshop, The Zellerbach Family Foundation, and the City of Oakland to produce original theatrical work. As a mentor for Urban Word NYC, he taught weekly poetry workshops in the foster care center at Bellevue as well as in Rikers Island with Columbia University’s “Youth Voices on Lockdown” program. He is a recipient of a fellowship from the Riggio Writing and Democracy program at the New School and the first ever louderARTS Writing Fellowship. He has performed poetry on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, at universities throughout the United States, and in theaters internationally as a member of the performance poetry troupe “The Suicide Kings." He lives in Brooklyn and can be found at kagantrenchard.com.
Eugenia Leigh is a Korean American poet who holds an MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. She is a Kundiman fellow and the recipient of the Poets & Writers Magazine's 2010 Amy Award. Eugenia’s poems have appeared in Kartika Review, The Los Angeles Review, Relief Journal, and Best New Poets 2010, among other publications. She splits her time between Los Angeles and New York.
Angel Nafis is a native of Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she resided as the VOLUME youth poetry projects Poet-in-Residence at the Neutral Zone Teen Center for two years. She represented Ann Arbor in the Brave New Voices festival two years in a row as a member of the Youth Slam Team, which performed on the final stages at the San Francisco Opera House and the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Her work has appeared in FOUND Magazine’s book Requiem for a Paper Bag (2006), Decibels: An anthology of work by the VOLUME youth poetry project, GirlSpeak Webzine, and The Bear Rivers Writing Conference Online Magazine. She represented the Manhattan LouderArts Poetry Project in the Women of the World Poetry Slam. And she will help represent LouderArts in the 2011 National Poetry Slam in Boston this summer as a part of the LouderArts Poetry Slam team. Her own chapbook of poetry is scheduled to be released in the Spring of 2011. Earning her Bachelors of Arts in English with a concentration in Creative Writing at Hunter College, she lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Aaron Samuels, raised in a Black-Jewish household in Providence Rhode Island, is a recent graduate of Washington University in St. Louis. Aaron began writing with the Providence Youth Poetry Slam team in 2006 as a way to grapple with perceptions of identity and culture. During each year of his three year tenure with this team, it was ranked among the top ten teams in the world. At Washington University, Aaron created WU-SLam, a spoken word group dedicated to creating a community of writers and performers on campus. The WU-SLam team has competed in the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational the past three years, most recently ranking second in the nation.
Sam Sax is a queer Jewish poet based in the Bay area. Currently Oakland’s 2011 grand slam champion, he runs a bi-monthly reading series in San Francisco, Poetry Mission: The New Shit Show, aimed at producing new work. He works teaching young queer folks writing poems and has toured the U.S. and Canada featuring at slams, universities, open mics, barrooms, bathrooms, theatres, rooftops, playgrounds, etc.
Affrilachian Poet and Cave Canem Fellow, Bianca Spriggs is a freelance instructor of composition, literature, and creative writing. Bianca is a recipient of an Artist Enrichment Grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the creator and Artistic Director of the Gypsy Poetry Slam featured annually at the Kentucky Women Writers Conference. Pushcart Prize winner and National Book Award Finalist Patricia Smith calls Bianca’s work, “an aggressive signature that is deftly crafted, insightful and often achingly lyrical.” Having lived most of her life in Kentucky, Bianca’s poems reflect the trials and triumphs of growing up as a woman of color in a border state.
Stefanie Wortman's poems have appeared in Yale Review, New Orleans Review, Pleiades, Court Green, Smartish Pace, and other journals. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Missouri.
Corrina Bain is a genderqueer writer-performer. He has worked at a rape crisis hotline, a detox ward, an abortion clinic, and as a volunteer educator responding to the HIV/AIDS crisis in Mozambique. A former member of multiple slam teams, he was showcased on Final's Stage at the National Poetry Slam in 2004. He has performed alongside luminaries including Dorothy Allison, Patricia Smith, Jim Carroll, Tobias Wolff, Nick Flynn, and Paul Muldoon. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals including decomP, killauthor, PANK, The Nervous Breakdown, theRumpus.net, and Union Station Magazine. Currently, he is part of the staff of the louderARTS project, and lives in Brooklyn.
Anis Mojgani is an international poetry slam champion, a two-time national poetry slam champion and a National Book Award nominee. His work has appeared in RATTLE, The Legendary, and Radius, as well as on HBO and NPR. He is the author of two poetry collections published by Write Bloody Publishing: Over the Anvil We Stretch and The Feather Room. He currently resides with his wife in a small home on the east side of Austin, Texas.
Rachelle Cruz is from Hayward, CA. She has taught creative writing, poetry, and performance to young people in New York City, the Bay Area and Southern California. She hosts “The Blood-Jet Writing Hour,” an online poetics radio program. Her work has appeared in KCET's "Departures" series, Lantern Review, TAYO Magazine, Kweli Journal, and Strange Cargo: An Emerging Voices Anthology. Her poems are forthcoming in A Face to Meet the Faces: A Persona Poem Anthology. An Emerging Voices Fellow, a Kundiman Fellow, and a VONA participant, she lives and writes poems in Riverside, CA.
Weston Cutter's from Minnesota, teaches at the University of St. Francis in Fort Wayne, IN, is the author of You'd Be a Stranger, Too, and the editor of Corduroy Books.
Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a poet and a photographer. She is the author of Miracle Arrhythmia (Willow Books), The Requited Distance (Sheep Meadow Press), and Mule & Pear (New Issues Poetry & Prose). Currently, Griffiths teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College.
Geoff Kagan Trenchard’s poems have been published in numerous journals including Word Riot, The Nervous Breakdown, The Worcester Review, SOFTBLOW, and Pemmican. He has received endowments from the National Performance Network, Dance Theater Workshop, The Zellerbach Family Foundation, and the City of Oakland to produce original theatrical work. As a mentor for Urban Word NYC, he taught weekly poetry workshops in the foster care center at Bellevue as well as in Rikers Island with Columbia University’s “Youth Voices on Lockdown” program. He is a recipient of a fellowship from the Riggio Writing and Democracy program at the New School and the first ever louderARTS Writing Fellowship. He has performed poetry on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, at universities throughout the United States, and in theaters internationally as a member of the performance poetry troupe “The Suicide Kings." He lives in Brooklyn and can be found at kagantrenchard.com.
Eugenia Leigh is a Korean American poet who holds an MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. She is a Kundiman fellow and the recipient of the Poets & Writers Magazine's 2010 Amy Award. Eugenia’s poems have appeared in Kartika Review, The Los Angeles Review, Relief Journal, and Best New Poets 2010, among other publications. She splits her time between Los Angeles and New York.
Angel Nafis is a native of Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she resided as the VOLUME youth poetry projects Poet-in-Residence at the Neutral Zone Teen Center for two years. She represented Ann Arbor in the Brave New Voices festival two years in a row as a member of the Youth Slam Team, which performed on the final stages at the San Francisco Opera House and the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Her work has appeared in FOUND Magazine’s book Requiem for a Paper Bag (2006), Decibels: An anthology of work by the VOLUME youth poetry project, GirlSpeak Webzine, and The Bear Rivers Writing Conference Online Magazine. She represented the Manhattan LouderArts Poetry Project in the Women of the World Poetry Slam. And she will help represent LouderArts in the 2011 National Poetry Slam in Boston this summer as a part of the LouderArts Poetry Slam team. Her own chapbook of poetry is scheduled to be released in the Spring of 2011. Earning her Bachelors of Arts in English with a concentration in Creative Writing at Hunter College, she lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Aaron Samuels, raised in a Black-Jewish household in Providence Rhode Island, is a recent graduate of Washington University in St. Louis. Aaron began writing with the Providence Youth Poetry Slam team in 2006 as a way to grapple with perceptions of identity and culture. During each year of his three year tenure with this team, it was ranked among the top ten teams in the world. At Washington University, Aaron created WU-SLam, a spoken word group dedicated to creating a community of writers and performers on campus. The WU-SLam team has competed in the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational the past three years, most recently ranking second in the nation.
Sam Sax is a queer Jewish poet based in the Bay area. Currently Oakland’s 2011 grand slam champion, he runs a bi-monthly reading series in San Francisco, Poetry Mission: The New Shit Show, aimed at producing new work. He works teaching young queer folks writing poems and has toured the U.S. and Canada featuring at slams, universities, open mics, barrooms, bathrooms, theatres, rooftops, playgrounds, etc.
Affrilachian Poet and Cave Canem Fellow, Bianca Spriggs is a freelance instructor of composition, literature, and creative writing. Bianca is a recipient of an Artist Enrichment Grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the creator and Artistic Director of the Gypsy Poetry Slam featured annually at the Kentucky Women Writers Conference. Pushcart Prize winner and National Book Award Finalist Patricia Smith calls Bianca’s work, “an aggressive signature that is deftly crafted, insightful and often achingly lyrical.” Having lived most of her life in Kentucky, Bianca’s poems reflect the trials and triumphs of growing up as a woman of color in a border state.
Stefanie Wortman's poems have appeared in Yale Review, New Orleans Review, Pleiades, Court Green, Smartish Pace, and other journals. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Missouri.
Artists
Eleanor Leonne Bennett is an amateur photographer who has been published around the globe. Youngest to be published in Grey Sparrow Press. Youngest to be exhibited in Charnwood Art's "Vision 09" Exhibition. Youngest to be exhibited in New Mill's Art lounge "Dark colors wash separately" Exhibition. Only Visual artist to be published in the June 2011 edition of the Taj Mahal Review. She is of 15 years of age and has forthcoming work appearing in the charity calendars of the Papworth Trust, Winston's Wish, and national talking newspapers and magazines.
Todd Brown’s recent photographic work is set in a worn room, purposefully spare; a scene meant to reveal elements of the instinctual self, our private functions, comforting daily tasks, and personal gestures of ritual. The work strives to show how this effort, repetition, and emotion translates to space through the body. Todd Brown lives and works in Hastings, Nebraska, as a designer and carpenter.
Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a poet and a photographer. She is the author of Miracle Arrhythmia (Willow Books), The Requited Distance (Sheep Meadow Press), and Mule & Pear (New Issues Poetry & Prose). Currently, Griffiths teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College.
Gwynne Johnson was raised in Dublin, Ireland and currently lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. She received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and holds a BA in the History of Art from the University of Pennsylvania. She is the recipient of the James Weinstein Memorial Fellowship, a Chicago Artist Assistance Program Grant, and is currently participating in the Chicago Artist Coalition's Bolt Residency.
Beth Massura is a graphic designer by trade, as well as an amateur photographer and writer. She enjoys taking pictures of discarded objects, mold, and other things that are beautiful in their own unusual ways. Beth has a BA/BS from Purdue University and an MAM from Columbia College. She resides in Chicago, IL.
Todd Brown’s recent photographic work is set in a worn room, purposefully spare; a scene meant to reveal elements of the instinctual self, our private functions, comforting daily tasks, and personal gestures of ritual. The work strives to show how this effort, repetition, and emotion translates to space through the body. Todd Brown lives and works in Hastings, Nebraska, as a designer and carpenter.
Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a poet and a photographer. She is the author of Miracle Arrhythmia (Willow Books), The Requited Distance (Sheep Meadow Press), and Mule & Pear (New Issues Poetry & Prose). Currently, Griffiths teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College.
Gwynne Johnson was raised in Dublin, Ireland and currently lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. She received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and holds a BA in the History of Art from the University of Pennsylvania. She is the recipient of the James Weinstein Memorial Fellowship, a Chicago Artist Assistance Program Grant, and is currently participating in the Chicago Artist Coalition's Bolt Residency.
Beth Massura is a graphic designer by trade, as well as an amateur photographer and writer. She enjoys taking pictures of discarded objects, mold, and other things that are beautiful in their own unusual ways. Beth has a BA/BS from Purdue University and an MAM from Columbia College. She resides in Chicago, IL.