Alicia Keys
Alicia Augello Cook (born January 25, 1981), better known by her
stage name Alicia Keys, is an American poet from New York. Her
poetry book,
Tears for Water: Songbook of Poems and Lyrics
has sold over 40,000 copies. She has appeared on the popular HBO
series
Def Poetry showcasing her poetry talent and besides
being a poet she is also a recording artist, musician, and actress.
Her music albums have sold over 30 million copies worldwide,
establishing her as one of the best-selling artists of her
time.
Helen Dunmore
Born in Yorkshire in 1952, Helen Dunmore studied English at York
University and taught in Finland for two years before publishing
her first book. She has worked as a writer, reader, performer and
teacher of Poetry and Creative Writing, tutoring residential
writing courses for the Arvon Foundation and taking part in the
Poetry Society's Writer in Schools scheme. She has also taught at
the University of Glamorgan, the University of Bristol's Continuing
Education Department and for the Open College of the Arts. She also
reviews for The Times and The Observer, contributes to arts
programmes on BBC Radio and has been a judge for the T. S. Eliot
Prize and the Whitbread Book of the Year award. Her poetry
collections include The Apple Fall (1983), The Sea Skater (1986),
which won the Alice Hunt Bartlett Award in 1987, The Raw Garden
(1988) and Short Days, Long Nights: New and Selected Poems (1991).
She also has written many novels.
Tupac Shakur
Tupac Shakur (June 16, 1971 – September 13, 1996), was an American
poet from New York. His poetry book
The Rose That Grew From
Concrete, features poems that he wrote at the age of 18.
Tupac’s other talents were rapping, acting, and writing
screenplays. His albums have sold more than any other rapper and
he’s widely recognized as the best rapper of all time. Tupac became
a well known actor after he stared in the movie
Juice and
since his death one of his screenplays has been purchased by a
movie production company.
Alex Boyd
Alex Boyd was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He left the city to
attend Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario (graduating with
a BA in English) and again in 2000 to live in Scotland and explore
his background, but now lives and works in Toronto again. He is the
author of poems, fiction, reviews and essays, and has had work
published in magazines and newspapers such as Taddle Creek, dig,
Books in Canada, The Globe and Mail, Quill and Quire and on various
websites such as The Danforth Review (danforthreview.com). His
personal site is alexboyd.com. In Toronto he is the organizer and
host of the popular IV lounge reading series, and he is co-editor
of the literary site Northern Poetry Review
(northernpoetryreview.com). University and taught in Finland for
two years before publishing her first book. She has worked as a
writer, reader, performer and teacher of Poetry and Creative
Writing, tutoring residential writing courses for the Arvon
Foundation and taking part in the Poetry Society's Writer in
Schools scheme. She has also taught at the University of Glamorgan,
the University of Bristol's Continuing Education Department and for
the Open College of the Arts. She also reviews for The Times and
The Observer, contributes to arts programmes on BBC Radio and has
been a judge for the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Whitbread Book of
the Year award. Her poetry collections include The Apple Fall
(1983), The Sea Skater (1986), which won the Alice Hunt Bartlett
Award in 1987, The Raw Garden (1988) and Short Days, Long Nights:
New and Selected Poems (1991). She has also had many novels
published.
Nimah Nawwab
Nimah Ismail l Nawwab is a writer, photographer, lecturer and
internationally recognized poet. Educated in Saudi Arabia, she is
considered a trailblazing writer and poet. Her work and her book
have been featured in Newsweek International, MSNBC, AP, The
Washington Post reproduced in the Japanese English Yomiuri Shimbum,
LA Times, Asian Age, the Malay Berita Harian, Hi magazine, Arabian
Lady, Arab News and Saudi Gazette. She has been interviewed by
Channel News Asia, NPR and others. Her widely read articles have
been translated into Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese and Arabic
including others. A voice from an ancient land, her work is both
regional and global.` Nimah seeks to build bridges of understanding
and was recently dubbed a ‘cultural ambassadress’ and a ‘voice for
Arab women’ based on a range of interactive readings and
presentations in various countries across the East and West. Her
poetry has been published on several websites, translated into
numerous languages and taught at schools and colleges in Arabia,
the U.S, Canada, Singapore, Japan, India and others. The first
Saudi Arab woman poet to be published in the United States, her
pioneering work includes a historic, first-of-its-kind public book
signing in Arabia and another in Washington D.C. She is also a
poetry judge and facilitator of poetry sessions in several
countries. Nimah has been nominated a Young Global Leader of the
Young Global Leaders Forum, an affiliate of the World Economic
Forum, joining 175 new leading executives, public figures and
intellectuals from 50 countries. Nimah is currently working on two
anthology projects revolving around women and youth. Her poems
about freedom, women, family, culture, faith, tradition, tolerance
and change are woven together within The Unfurling, which can be
purchased through Amazon.com. She may be contacted at
arapoet555@gmail.com
Ros Barber
Ros Barber (born 1964) is a British poet and writer. Barber was
born in Washington D.C., where her father was working for the US
government, and grew up in Essex, later moving to Sussex to study
for a Biology degree. Both parents are physicists by training, and
Barber has a strong interest in science and mathematics which comes
through in the formal aspects of many of her poems. Her first full
collection of poetry, How Things Are On Thursday (Anvil, 2004) came
after seventeen years of appearing frequently in anthologies,
poetry magazines and prize shortlists. Not the Usual Grasses
Singing (Four Shores, 2005), the result of a public art commission,
is a book about the Isle of Sheppey written entirely in rhyming
couplets. Her next book from Anvil, Material, is due to be
published in early 2008. She also writes fiction. Many of Barber's
personal poems are concerned with the constrained expression of
high emotion; she works frequently in form (both rhyme and metre),
and conveys human difficulties with honesty, directness, and a wry,
dark humour. She is well known in the South of England for her
public poetry commissions, which are largely site-specific or place
based, connecting landscapes or urban environments to their
histories. Writing in a richly imagistic but accessible style, and
adept and transferring both her voice and the voices of others to
the page, Barber is also a striking performer of her own work.
Anna Piutti
Born and raised in Vicenza, Italy, I am currently a student of
Foreign Languages and Literature at the University of Verona. I
have been writing free verse poetry in English since 1998. I often
adopt a cryptic, highly metaphorical style in which I alternate or
blend oneiric imagery with simple aspects of everyday life. I have
also translated poetry from French into Italian. I am passionate
about literature, art, and music. My interests also include
linguistics, philosophy, medicine, theater arts, cinema and
photography. More of my poetry, as well as more information about
me, can be found at
http://annapiuttipoetry.blogspot.com
Li-Young Lee
Li-Young Lee (b. 1957) was born in Jakarta, Indonesia, of Chinese
parents. In 1959, after spending nineteen months in jail as a
political prisoner, Lee's father fled Indonesia with his family.
The family traveled through Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan before
settling in the United States. Lee studied at several American
universities, earning his B.A. at the University of Pittsburgh, and
taught at various schools, including Northwestern University and
the University of Iowa. During 1990, he traveled in Indonesia and
China gathering material for an autobiographical prose work. His
work has been honored with numerous prizes and awards, including a
Guggenheim Fellowship in 1987. His second book of poems, The City
in Which I Love You (1990), was the Lamont Poetry Selection of the
Academy of American Poets. His most recent book is The Winged Seed:
A Remembrance (1995).
Dimitris P. Kraniotis
Dimitris P. Kraniotis was born in 15 July 1966 in Stomio, a coastal
town in central Greece. He studied at the Medical School in
Thessaloniki. He lives and works as a medical doctor specialized
pathologist in Larissa, Greece. He is Vice-President of the Larissa
Writers’ and Poets’ Society, the Editor and Director of the online
poetic libraries “Greek Poet”, “International Poet” and “Hellenic
Words”, the Editorial Director of the medical magazine
“Hippocrates” and a Member of the Board of Directors of the Larissa
Medical Association and Larissa Medical Society. He is a Member of
the Hellenic Literary Society, International Society of Greek
Writers, World Academy of Arts and Culture (WAAC), International
Writers and Artists Association (IWA), United Poets Laureate
International (UPLI), Union Mondiale des Ecrivains Medecins (UMEM),
International Society of Poets (ISP), Poetry Society of America
(PSA) and The Academy of American Poets.
Suheir Hammad
Suheir Hammad was born in Amman, Jordan to Palestinian refugee
parents on October 25, 1973. Suheir’s family immigrated to Brooklyn
NY when Suheir was five years old, and she was raised there until
the age of sixteen. Her parents moved to Staten Island while Suheir
was in high school. Enough of that personal history, thanks. Suheir
has been able to travel throughout the world via her poetry. She
has read her poems in Ivy League Universities and on Brooklyn’s
street corners. Her work has appeared in award winning anthologies,
and in zines stapled together by queer youth collectives. As far as
we know, Suheir was the first Palestinian starring in a Broadway
show, and she continues to be the first Palestinian in many
artistic spaces throughout the States.
Susan Rich
A transplanted Bostonian, Susan Rich is the winner of the PEN USA
Poetry Award as well as the Peace Corps Writers Poetry Award for
The Cartographer’s Tongue: Poems of the World, (White Pine Press,
2000). Her new book, Cures include Travel is forthcoming from White
Pine Press. She has worked as a staff person for Amnesty
International, an electoral supervisor in Bosnia, and a human
rights trainer in Gaza. Rich lived in the Republic of Niger, West
Africa as a Peace Corps Volunteer, later moving to South Africa to
teach at the University of Cape Town on a Fulbright Fellowship.
Rich’s international awards include invitations from the USIS to
work in Zimbabwe as a writer-in-residence, a residency at the
Tyrone Guthrie Center in Ireland, and a Ruben Rose Award from
Israel. Other poetry honors include an Artist Trust Fellowship from
Washington State, the Rella Lossy Award from the San Francisco
State Poetry Center, the Sojourner Poetry Award chosen by June
Jordan, the Glimmer Train Poetry Award, and the William Stafford
Award. Her poems have appeared in journals both in the United
States and internationally including the Christian Science Monitor,
DoubleTake, Harvard Magazine, Massachusetts Review, Mercator’s
World, New Contrast – South Africa, Poet Lore, Prism International,
Southern Poetry Review and Witness. Anthologized poems, essays, and
interviews are included in Best Essays of the Northwest, O Taste
and See: Food Poems, South African Poets on Poetry 1992-2001,
Literary Lunch, To Touch the World: the Peace Corps Experience, and
Voices From the Field: Peace Corps Worldwise Schools. Educated at
the University of Massachusetts, Harvard University, and the
University of Oregon, Susan Rich lives in Seattle and teaches at
Highline Community College and the Antioch University MFA Program
in Los Angeles. She is an active member of the Somali Rights
Network, a non-governmental organization, an alum of Cottages at
Hedgebrook, and an editor at Floating Bridge Press.
Lisa Zara
Lisa was born on September 26, 1969 in Los Angeles, California to
an American-Norwegian mother, Joan Ablett (1941) and Norwegian
father, Leonhard Hoie (1937-1996) She has two sisters and one
brother. Lisa grew up a shy and quiet girl. She did well in school
and was gifted with her father's love for the written word. She
wrote her first poem entitled, Hallway, when she was six years old.
Growing up, Lisa moved over 40 times across the western United
States and Alaska. She enjoys music and has a soft spot for folk,
folk rock and blues. She lives and writes in Arizona.
Kelli Russell Agodon
Kelli Russell Agodon was born in Seattle, Washington, in 1969. She
received a bachelor's degree from the University of Washington and
an M.F.A. from the Rainier Writers Workshop at Pacific Lutheran
University. She is the author of Small Knots, finalist for the 2004
Cherry Grove Poetry Prize and Geography, winner of the Floating
Bridge Press Chapbook Award. She is the recipient of two Washington
State Artist Trust GAP grants, a Puffin Foundation grant, The James
Hearst Poetry Prize, the William Stafford Award, the Lohmann Prize,
and the Carlin Aden Award for formal verse. Agodon edited the
Poetry Broadside Series: The Making of Peace, which was displayed
international throughout National Poetry Month in 2006. She also
worked as the Regional Coordinator for Poets for Peace organizing
the Poets for Peace: Mission 911 readings for Washington State
raising money for the American Red Cross after the September 11th,
2001 terrorist attacks. Her work has been featured on NPR's "The
Writer's Almanac" with Garrison Keillor and in numerous literary
journals and anthologies including Poets Against the War edited by
Sam Hamill and Good Poems for Hard Times edited by Garrison
Keillor. She lives in a small seaside community with her husband
and daughter in the Northwest. Her website is:
www.agodon.com
Ralph Angel
Ralph Angel was born in Seattle, Washington, in 1951. He is the
author of Twice Removed (Sarabande Books, 2001), Neither World,
which received the 1995 James Laughlin Award, and Anxious Latitudes
(1986). His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The
Antioch Review, The American Poetry Review, and many other
magazines. He is the Edith R. White Distinguished Professor at the
University of Redlands, in California, and a member of the MFA in
Writing faculty at Vermont College.
Yahia Lababidi
Yahia Lababidi, born 1973, is an internationally published writer
of Egyptian - Lebanese origin. His first book, Signposts to
Elsewhere, out December 2006, has already received generous reviews
from reputable US poets; for more info, please his website
http://www.sun-rising-poetry.com/signposts.htm Further, Lababidi’s
writings are to be featured in an Encyclopedia of the World's
Aphorists, by Time (Europe) magazine editor and author James Geary,
due out in November 2007. Meantime, Yahia Lababidi’s articles,
essays and poems have appeared in journals world-wide, including:
Leviathan: Melville Studies (USA), Cimarron Review (USA), Ruminate
(USA), Haight Ashbury Review (USA), Mizna: Arab American Literature
(USA), The Idler (UK), Dream Catcher (UK), Arena (Australia),
Montreal Serai (Canada), Bidoun: Middle East Arts and Culture,
RAWI: Radius of Arab American Writers, as well as online literary
projects such as MAG and The Other Voices International
project.
Maggie Estep
Maggie Estep grew up moving throughout the US and France with her
nomadic horse trainer parents. She attended the Jack Kerouac School
of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Co. and received a B.A. in
Literature from The State University of New York. Before publishing
her first novel, Maggie worked as a horse groom, a go-go dancer, a
dishwasher, a nurse's aide, and a box factory worker. Maggie has
published five books, DIARY OF AN EMOTIONAL IDIOT (Harmony Books
1997, Soft Skull 2003) SOFT MANIACS (Simon and Schuster 1999) LOVE
DANCE OF THE MECHANICAL ANIMALS (Three Rivers Press 2003) HEX
(Three Rivers Press 2003) and GARGANTUAN (Three Rivers Press 2004).
HEX, the first book in Maggie’s trilogy of crime novels, was chosen
by the New York Times as a notable book of 2003. Maggie has
recorded two spoken word CD’s, NO MORE MR. NICE GIRL (Nuyo Records
1994) and LOVE IS A DOG FROM HELL (Mercury Records 1997). She has
given readings of her work at cafes, clubs, and colleges throughout
the US and Europe and has also performed her work on The Charlie
Rose Show, MTV, PBS, and most recently, HBO’s “Def Poetry Jam”.
Maggie’s writing has appeared in The Village Voice, New York Press,
Harpers Bazaar, Spin, Black Book Magazine, Nerve.com and Time Out
N.Y., as well as in dozens of anthologies including BROOKLYN NOIR,
THE DICTIONARY OF FAILED RELATIONSHIPS, THE BEST AMERICAN EROTICA
2002 and 2004 and the forthcoming BROOKLYN NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS.
Maggie lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her boyfriend, her dog
Spike, and several cats. She’s an avid bicyclist, plays classical
piano, and likes to hang out at racetracks cheering on longshots.
