Phil Kaye’s work has been featured in settings ranging from NPR to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He has performed his work in eighteen counties, and was invited to open for His Holiness The Dalai Lama for the celebration of his 80th birthday.

Phil is the co-director of Project VOICE, an organization that partners with schools to bring poetry to the classroom. A former teacher of weekly poetry workshops in maximum security prisons, Phil was the head coordinator of Space in Prisons for the Arts and Creative Expression. Phil is from California and currently lives in New York City.

Claire Schwartz’s poetry has appeared in Apogee, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Massachusetts Review, and Prairie Schooner, and her essays, reviews, and interviews in The Iowa Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She is a PhD candidate in African American Studies and American Studies at Yale.

Stevie Edwards holds a PhD in creative writing from University of North Texas and an MFA in poetry from Cornell University. Stevie’s poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, American Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. She is a Lecturer at Clemson University and author of Sadness Workshop (Button Poetry, 2018), Humanly (Small Doggies Press, 2015), and Good Grief (Write Bloody Publishing, 2012).

Edwards is currently Poetry Editor of The South Carolina Review and her third full-length collection of poetry, Quiet Armor, is forthcoming from Northwestern University Press’s Curbstone imprint. Originally a Michigander, she now lives in South Carolina with her husband and a small herd of rescue pitbulls (Daisy, Tinkerbell, and Peaches). Stevie uses she/they pronouns.

William Evans is a writer, instructor and performer from Columbus, OH. He founded the Writing Wrongs Poetry Slam in 2009 and appeared on seven National Slam teams from Columbus collectively. His work can be seen online in Radius Poetry, The Legendary, Joint Literary Magazine and other publications.

Melissa Lozada-Oliva is a spoken word poet & educator living in Boston whose fierceness and charm have made her a poetry phenomenon, with her work appearing on Upworthy, Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, and countless other media outlets. Melissa’s ability to speak truth to power as an unapologetically feminist Latina comes as a breath of fresh air to people expecting the “same old poetry.” Blending power, warmth, and flat-out hilarity, Melissa leaves readers and audiences not only excited about changing the world, but excited about being a part of that change.

Interested in booking Melissa for a show? Click here.

Sabrina Benaim is a writer, performance & teaching artist, whose home base is Toronto. She was a member of the Canadian championship-winning 2014 Toronto Poetry Slam team, & in 2015, she represented Toronto at the Women Of The World Poetry Slam.

Sabrina has written poems for ESPNW, The Government of Canada, & most recently, made her Canadian television debut with Sport Chek, writing & voicing the third installment of their #WhatItTakes Olympic Manifesto video series. Sabrina enjoys breaking down stigma, women who help women, & the Toronto Blue Jays. She will accept any invitation to dance.

Donte is a 20-year-old queer, black poet/actor/dancer whose first poem was written at the age of seven about feeling trapped, unheard. The 2016 Most Promising Young Poet, awarded by Academy of American Poets, he is a well-known performance artist throughout the Twin Cities and was a member of the 2013 and 2015 BeHeard Slam Team, representing Minne- sota at the International Youth Poetry Festival Brave New Voices, as well as a part of the 2016 Twin Cities Unified National Slam Team.

Donte has shared the stage with some of today’s most acclaimed poets, including Danez Smith, Sierra Demulder, Guante, Neil Hilborn, Hieu Minh Nguyen, and more. He has served as a Youth Advisor for TruArtSpeaks and is currently a board member for Black Table Arts. National Book Critics Circle Award Recipient Claudia Rankine shared a poem by Donte at the 2016 Dodge Poetry Festival. Donte’s first poem was published when he was 16 years old and he has since gained national recognition. He is an editor at Button Poetry and studies English and Theater at Augsburg College. He resides in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where he hibernates during the winter and seriously considers purchasing a warmer yet less fashionable jacket.

Olivia Gatwood is a nationally touring poet, performer, and educator from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her work has been featured on HBO and Verses & Flow, as well as in Muzzle Magazine, Bustle and The Huffington Post, among others. She has been a finalist at the National Poetry Slam, Women of the World Poetry Slam, and Brave New Voices. She is a graduate of Pratt Institute’s Fiction Program and currently lives in New York City.