Button Staff
Sam Van Cook – Founder & President
Sam is the founder of Button Poetry. He is a National Poetry Slam champion and graduate of the University of Minnesota. Hailing from Boulder, Colorado and Moscow, Idaho, he now resides in Minneapolis.
Riley Lang – Director of Marketing
Riley is a poet, MC, screenwriter, director, & producer from Minneapolis, MN. He currently resides in Los Angeles, and is fascinated with dreaming, storytelling, traveling, fooding, & anything book related, specifically building forts.
Spencer Brownstein – Video Editor
Spencer Brownstein hails from Brooklyn, New York. Also known as Dr. Cool, he enjoys poems, long walks on the beach, and writing biographies.
Eric Tu – Video Editor
Tu the Judoka (Eric Tu) is a two-time national silver medalist in judo and occasional spoken word poet. Tu holds the rank of sankyu under shichidan Tom Crone and served as TA for the Unniversity of Minnesota’s judo course. He lives in Midtown Minneapolis and you can catch him biking down the Greenway or hanging out at the Global Market.
TaneshaNicole Tyler – Publishing Operations Assistant
Jamie Hudalla – Social Media & Digital Marketing
Patrick Hanson – Social Media & Digital Marketing
Former Button Team Members
Hanif Abdurraqib – Poetry Editor
Hanif is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His first collection of poems, The Crown Ain’t Worth Much, was released in 2016 and was nominated for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. His first collection of essays, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was released in fall 2017 by Two Dollar Radio.
Hitomi Wong – Shipping Coordinator & Post-Production Operations Assistant
Hitomi comes from an artistic and geeky background, majoring in Fashion Design. Hitomi enjoys playing games (board games or video games) and eating or making food, often times imitating Julia Child. Has extreme fear of bugs.
Alyssa Fabia – Publishing Operations Coordinator
Alyssa hails from the East Coast. She handles many day-to-day operations at Button, as well as making sure our staff are happy and paid. Alyssa enjoys black tea over green tea, rock climbing over bouldering, and planes over trains.
Dylan Garity
Dylan is a writer and performer who thinks that whispering just means talking loudly but in a lower voice. He hails from Oregon and will always love the West Coast, but thinks the Twin Cities are pretty cool too.
Neno Grae
Neno is a writer and graphic designer from the middle of somewhere in the Midwest. They make sure Button events run smoothly and churn out a lot of the cool graphics you see on the ‘gram. Neno enjoys biking, working with artists, local breweries, and dinosaurs. You can catch them listening to Prince + other 80’s classics in the Button office.
Yashin Voss
In addition to Yashin’s post and tech positions, they work as a project manager assisting with company development. They take their tea with a good book of philosophy, and will not stop talking about Star Wars.