Anthony Febo is a poet, actor, youth worker, lover and friend. He founded Mill City Slam, the adult slam poetry scene, and M.O.M.S. the Middlesex/UMass Lowell college slam poetry scene in 2010. Along side his fellow partners in rhyme, in 2009 he founded FreeVerse!, a youth organization dedicated to expand the presence of spoken word in the city of Lowell. He is a lover of theatre and art, a strong believer that poetry is something we live, and a pretty good dancer.
Elisabeth Houston was born and raised in Brookline, Massachusetts. She graduated from Yale, where she studied history and then from Boston University's MFA program in poetry. She currently teaches college literature to women who are incarcerated through Boston University's Prison Education Program.
Hannah Baker-Siroty lives with her wife and daughter in Arlington. She has degrees from University of Wisconsin-Madison and Sarah Lawrence College. She has held an Emerging Writer fellowship from The Writers' Room of Boston and a residency at The Vermont Studio Center. Some of her poetry can be found in Best New Poets 2012, Cactus Heart, Each Moment a Mountain, and Lavender Review. She is an Assistant Professor of Writing at Pine Manor College where she is also the Acting Director of the College Composition program. When she can find the time, she is working on a series of poems about the Vice-Presidents of the United States. Learn more about Hannah at www.poetrying.com.
Jamele Adams, aka Harlym 1two5, is a poetic force to be reckoned with and the Dean of Students at Brandeis University. In his words: "Poetry climbs the limbs of wind soaked dream tops And sherlocked gumdrops missing teeth. Shoot the city And suffocate the criminal. Strangle the miscarriage of peace Give people a reason to love themselves. This is my bio."
January Gill O’Neil is the author of Underlife (CavanKerry Press, December 2009), and a forthcoming collection, Misery Islands (CavanKerry Press, fall 2014). She is the executive director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival and an assistant professor of English at Salem State University.
Jennifer Jean’s most recent poetry collection is The Fool (Big Table Publishing). Other poetry collections include: The Archivist, Fishwife, and In the War; as well, she's released Fishwife Tales, a collaborative CD comprised of art songs and accompanied recitations. Her poetry and prose have been published in numerous journals and anthologies, including: Drunken Boat, Tidal Basin Review, Denver Quarterly, Caketrain, Poetica, and The Mom Egg Journal. Jennifer is a volunteer blogger for Amirah, a website advocating for sex-trafficking survivors; she’s a principal organizer of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival; and, she teaches writing at Salem State University. For more about Jennifer, visit: www.fishwifetales.com.
Johanna Lyman is a motivational speaker, a coach, and she calls herself a
Story Whisperer. She has helped thousands of people all over the world find the gifts hidden inside their stories so they can get on with making a positive difference in the world. She works with teenagers, bringing them through a process where they write their stories in the form of spoken word poetry and present them in a poetry slam. Johanna believes in the power of story telling to heal the world. To find out more about her work, go to www.openingpandorasbox.com.
Story Whisperer. She has helped thousands of people all over the world find the gifts hidden inside their stories so they can get on with making a positive difference in the world. She works with teenagers, bringing them through a process where they write their stories in the form of spoken word poetry and present them in a poetry slam. Johanna believes in the power of story telling to heal the world. To find out more about her work, go to www.openingpandorasbox.com.
Jonathan Mendoza is a spoken word artist/educator, musician, occasional filmmaker and student. He is a youth peer-leader and co-teacher in spoken word at the IBA Youth Development Program in Boston’s South End and is also a MassLEAP spoken word teaching-artist. He was a member and co-coach of two Louder Than A Bomb semi-finalist teams and competed with Emerson College’s 2014 CUPSI team in Boulder, Colorado. Jonathan is seriously addicted to art that helps positively transform individuals and communities.
Noah Burton was born in Kansas City, Kansas and grew up in Virginia. He graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University, where he studied philosophy and is currently attending the University of New Hampshire's MFA program and teaching at the university. His poems have appeared in Burningword, The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, Scapegoat Review, andKenning Journal, and are forthcoming in Basalt Magazine.
Regie Gibson is a poet, songwriter, author, workshop facilitator, and educator. Gibson and his work appear in the film Love Jones, based largely on events in his life. In 1999 he performed for the award-winning Traffic Series at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater where he adapted the work of Kurt Vonnegut. In addition, he has performed at The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago Field Museum of Natural History, and many other venues. Gibson is widely published in anthologies, magazines, and journals, such as Power Lines, An Anthology of Poetry along with Pulitzer-Prize winning poets Gwendolyn Brooks, Yosef Komunyakaa, and Lisel Mueller. His first full-length book of poetry, Storms Beneath The Skin, was released in 2001. Gibson has also taught, lectured and facilitated workshops.
Tara Skurtu (b. 1982, Key West) earned an MFA at Boston University, where she currently teaches Creative Writing. She’s a Robert Pinsky Global Fellow and a recipient of a 2013 Academy of American Poets Prize. Her work is published internationally, and has appeared in Poetry Review, The Dalhousie Review, The Los Angeles Review, B O D Y International, the minnesota review, The Southeast Review, Poet Lore, Salamander, and elsewhere.
Timothy Gager is the author of ten books of short fiction and poetry. His latest, The Shutting Door (Ibbetson Street Press), is his first full length poetry book in more than eight years. He has hosted the successful Dire Literary Series in Cambridge, Massachusetts every month for the past twelve years and is the co-founder of Somerville News Writers Festival.