Randa Jarrar’s work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Buzzfeed, The Utne Reader, Salon, The Offing, Guernica, The Rumpus, The Oxford American, Ploughshares, The Sun, Medium, and others. Her first book, the Arab-American coming of age novel, A Map of Home, is now on many college syllabi. It was published in seven languages & won a Hopwood Award and an Arab-American Book Award. Her most recent book, Him, Me, Muhammad Ali, won an American Book Award, a PEN Oakland Award, and a Story Prize Spotlight Award, and was named a Key Collection for Fall 2016 by Library Journal and one of Electric Literature‘s 25 best collections of the year. Jarrar is a columnist for Bitch Magazine, has worked with PEN American to judge fiction prizes and to put on events, and was the PEN Ten Interviews editor in 2016-17. She is the Executive Director of RAWI, a literary nonprofit that serves Arab-American writers. Jarrar has received fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, Hedgebrook, and others. In 2010, she was named one of the most gifted writers of Arab origin under the age of 40. She is the translator of several Arabic short stories and a novel, and has taught for MFA programs at CSU-Fresno and Sierra Nevada College, and at Tin House’s Summer Workshop. She holds an MFA from the University of Michigan, where she was a Zell Fellow.
Roberto Montes is the author of I DON’T KNOW DO YOU, named one of the Best Books of 2014 by NPR and a finalist for the 2014 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry from The Publishing Triangle. His poetry has appeared in The Lambda Literary Spotlight, Guernica, PEN America Poetry Series, and elsewhere. A chapbook, GRIEVANCES, is now available from the Atlas Review TAR chapbook series.
Andrea Long Chu is a writer and critic living in Brooklyn. Her writing has appeared, or will soon, in n+1, Boston Review, The New York Times, Artforum, Bookforum, Chronicle of Higher Education, 4Columns, differences, Women and Performance, TSQ, and Journal of Speculative Philosophy. Her book Females: A Concern is forthcoming this year from Verso.
Andrea Abi-Karam is an arab-american genderqueer punk poet-performer cyborg, writing on the art of killing bros, the intricacies of cyborg bodies, trauma & delayed healing. Their chapbook, THE AFTERMATH (Commune Editions, 2016), attempts to queer Fanon’s vision of how poetry fails to inspire revolution. Under the full Community Engagement Scholarship, Andrea received their MFA in Poetry from Mills College. With Drea Marina they co-hosted Words of Resistance [2012-2017] a monthly, radical, QTPOC open floor poetry series to fundraise for political prisoners’ commissary funds. Selected by Bhanu Kapil, Andrea’s first book is EXTRATRANSMISSION [Kelsey Street Press, 2019] a poetic critique of the U.S. military’s role in the War on Terror. Simone White selected their second assemblage, Villainy for forthcoming publication. Andrea toured with Sister Spit in 2018 and has performed at RADAR, The Poetry Project, The STUD, Basilica Soundscape, TransVisionaries, Southern Exposure, Counterpulse, Poets House, Radius for Arab-American Writers. With Kay Gabriel they are co-editing an anthology of Radical Trans Poetics forthcoming from Nightboat Books in 2020. They are a leo currently obsessed with queer terror and convertibles.
Leonard Schwartz is the author of numerous books of poetry, including, most recently, Heavy Sublimation (Talisman House, 2018) and Salamander: A Bestiary (Chax Press, 2017), with painter Simon Carr. His workin poetics The New Babel: Toward a Poetics of the Mid-East Crises (University of Arkansas Press, 2016), is inclusive of poetry, essays, and interviews. Other titles include If (Talisman House, 2012), and At Element, which explore the idea of an eco-poetics, as well as A Message Back and Other Furors (Chax Press, 2008), The Library of Seven Readings (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2008), and Language as Responsibility (Tinfish Editions, 2006). He also edited and co-translated Benjamin Fondane’s Cine-Poems and Other, with New York Review Books. Schwartz hosts the radio program Cross Cultural Poetics, archived online at the University of Pennsylvania’s Pennsound. About his poetry Forrest Gander writes “Leonard Schwartz’s poems introduce philosophical meditation to emotional sensibility in a way that has become unusual in contemporary poetry. In his work, one feels the risk, even the vertigo, of the mind orienting itself to otherness, to world, and to language. The sublimating and uplifting rhythms of his poems are pierced with veins of divinity. One might say in fact that the body of his work unwinds a long Gnostic inquiry that begins to articulate the contradictions and complexities of a significant and richly felt thought.” About The New Babel, Joseph Houlihan writes in Entropy: “Through his poetry, Cross Cultural Poetics, as well as his work as an editor of poetry in translation, Leonard Schwartz engages in an explicit project to deepen bonds across cultural difference, in the service of creating a society that allows these differences. The New Babel offers a brief and worthwhile glimpse into this expansive and generous project.” Schwartz splits his time between Washington State and NYC.
National Book Award winner and Pulitzer prize nominated poet Cornelius Eady has set his poetry to song with the Cornelius Eady Trio. Eady’s songs tell the story of passing time, the Black American experience and the blues in the style of Folk & Americana music. Guitarists Charlie Rauh & Lisa Liu join Eady to create layered and graceful arrangements to bolster Eady’s adept craftsmanship as a songwriter, lyricist, & poet. Cornelius Eady Trio’s debut album called “Field Recordings” was released by Kattywompus Press on vinyl and digital download in February 2017. The album is available for purchase HERE. The Trio will be releasing their second album “2 Out of 3” in Spring 2018 on Kattywompus Press.
Porsha Olayiwola is the 2014 Individual World Poetry Slam Champion and 2015 National Poetry Slam Champion. In 2018, Porsha was named by GK100 as one of Boston’s Most Influential People of Color. She is the Artistic Director at MassLEAP, a literary non-profit organization in Massachusetts serving youth artists. She is an MFA Candidate at Emerson College and has a full length collection of poetry forthcoming in 2019 with Button Poetry. As an educator and organizer Porsha seeks to cultivate spaces for emerging artists that allow them to deepen their understanding of craft and community. She has served youth artists in the city of Boston for the last six years and continues to grow spaces for artists and audience of the art. Porsha Olayiwola is the current Poet Laureate for the city of Boston.
Denice Frohman is a poet and performer from New York City. She is a CantoMundo Fellow and former Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion. Her poems have appeared in Nepantla: An Anthology for Queer Poets of Color, Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism, and elsewhere. She’s featured on hundreds of stages from The Apollo to the Nuyorican Poets Café, and co-organizes #PoetsforPuertoRico.
Michelle Tea is the author of over a dozen books of poetry, memoir, fiction, tarot how-too, children’s picture books and young adult fantasy. Her most recent, the essay collection Against Memoir: Complaints, Confessions and Criticisms, was longlisted forthe 2019 PEN/Diamonstein-Speilvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. She is the creator of the international phenomenon Drag Queen Story Hour, the online parenting zine Mutha, the long-running performance tour Sister Spit, and the Sister Spit Books series for City Lights. She currently curates the queer Amethyst Editions imprint at The Feminist Press, and co-curates and co-hosts JOSH, a monthly comedy house party, with the writer Tara Jepsen, in Los Angeles.
Sophia Shalmiyev emigrated from Leningrad to NYC in 1990. She is an MFA graduate of Portland State University with a second master’s degree in creative arts therapy from the School of Visual Arts. Sophia is a feminist writer and painter and lives in Portland with her two children. Mother Winter is her first book. Visit her website atwww.sophiashalmiyev.com for more.
Cat Fitzpatrick teaches at Rutgers University–Newark. She wrote the book of poems Glamourpuss and co-edited the Stonewall-Award-winning anthology Meanwhile Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy from Transgender Writers. She is currently working on a verse novel in Onegin stanzas about trans women making terrible choices. This is a topic she knows a fair bit about.
Lonely Christopher is the author of the poetry collections Death & Disaster Series and The Resignation, the short story collection The Mechanics of Homosexual Intercourse, and the novel THERE. His plays have been presented in Canada, China, and the United States. His film credits include several international shorts and the feature MOM, which he wrote and directed.
This is an older, archived version of The Poetry Project site. Information may have changed.
