Akeema-Zane was born and raised in Harlem and is of Trinidadian decent. She is most recently a graduate of Eugene Lang College, The New School in which she earned a B.A. in Africana Studies emphasizing the Anglophone Caribbean. Her interests are vast, however, presently she is being inspired by the literary works of Wilson Harris, Eric Wiliams, Peter Minshall, and major European writers and philosophers, as well as other forms of text regarding Caribbean and American youth cultures.
Yaz Barakat is from Jordan. He studied Film/Video in Rhode Island and has previously worked in animation and television production in Amman and Boston. He has lived in Astoria since 2004 and currently works at Doctors Without Borders. He enjoys writing, live music and strange art.
Tanya M. Beltram is a Bronx native and is a recent graduate of Manhattanville College's Masters in Writing Program, where she served as Inkwell Journal's Editor-in-chief. As a National Writers Union member she is on the board of their 501(C)(3), NWUSO. Beltram is also a scientific publisher contracting as a liason between the pharmaceutical industry and the FDA. Creatively, she is mostly known for sharing her written work during open mic nights and literary events, and currently she is finishing her first poetry chapbook.
Phyllis Capello is a writer\musician and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellow in fiction. Since 1984, she has been a teaching poet-in-residence with many organizations including Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Her poems appear in many anthologies and, since 1991, she has been a member of The Big Apple Circus Clown Care Unit as "Dr." Ukulele Lady, troubadour/clown, she's one of the performers who bring the joy and excitement of classical circus to the bedsides of hospitalized children all year 'round.
Erica Cardwell is a queer artist, director, educator, and part time techno-phobe. She is an advocate for spiritual activism, sexual liberation and rock n roll. Her work centers on deconstructing the imagery and social perspectives of marginalized and silenced peoples. She writes about art, womanism, girlhood, identity, language and ambiguous intention. Her essays have been featured in Ikons Magazine, the London Progressive Journal, and the Australian Dance Collaborative, "the Paper.” In 2009, she was a writer in residence at PAF in St. Erme, France, researching her performance bio, "Saintete". Erica lives in the land of make believe, Astoria, Queens and currently, she is doing Community Outreach at the Hetrick Martin Institute while also at work on a biographical project inspired by the life of French poet and playwright, Jean Genet.
By Day Olivia Ford occasionally writes, but mostly edits, for a phenomenal HIV/AIDS website, TheBody.com. She feels privileged to be able to fill her life with others' writing as an editor -- and attend others' births, as a trained doula -- though she's something of a writer herself, and an aspiring mom. By night her stuff's more prose-y, though hopefully not prosaic, or too sodden with puns like that one right there. She often uses birth metaphors because witnessing children enter the world, and women be born and reborn as parents, has added a unique dimension to her life. Themes/obsessions in her writing include family, empathy, the spectrum of obligation, various forms of unrequited affection.
George Hagen has lived on three continents, worked as a screenwriter in Los Angeles and written magazine pieces and cartoons. His novels, The Laments and Tom Bedlam, have been published in over ten countries, and translated into many languages, including French, Dutch, German, Italian, Swedish, Polish, Russian and Hebrew.
Eugene Hwang was born in Lubbock Texas and raised in Norwood New Jersey. The first occupation he ever wanted to have, at the age of three, was Superman. Between then and finally settling on writer, he wanted to be an architect, a professional soccer player, and a guitar god, in that order. If you graph the practicality of his desired occupations versus time you get, more or less, a parabola, with "Superman" and "writer" sharing the same y-coordinate. In 2007, Eugene received an MFA in Fiction in 2007 from New School University. He currently runs a pair of urban wear retail stores in Plainfield NJ and does much of his writing by dictating to his iPhone during his hour-long commutes.
Darwin Johnson bought his first computer, a Commodore 64 in 1982 and has been programming ever since. One of the more unique aspects of the Commodore 64 is it contains a music chip called the SID chip, that is still used to make electronic music today. Darwin's early programming experience with the SID Chip oriented him towards computers as musical instruments. He presently makes live electronic banjo music under the moniker schwaahed. Today he will be playing the acoustic banjo, which he learned on Pete Seegar’s knee, accompanied by Paul Grundl.
Susan Kent is a small town Georgia girl in the big city who is trying to work through her myriad psychological issues that arose as a result of being a small town Georgia girl. A freelance writer living in Park Slope, she spends her days writing web articles for life coaches and sporadically works on stories for her memoir and blog, Southern Discomforts. She is co-producer of Tell It: Brooklyn and can be seen performing live in storytelling events around NYC including The Moth StorySLAM, Barbershop Stories and 826 NYC’s Knight of Time.
Charan P. Morris is a poet/educator transplanted from Chicago to New York. A 2011-12 LAMBDA Literary Foundation Fellow, her work has been published in New York University’s Gallatin Review, Brownstone Magazine, Sinister Wisdom and is forthcoming in Kweli Journal. In addition to being a NYC public school educator for the past eight years, she has facilitated poetry workshops with diverse groups of writers including formerly incarcerated youth and graduate students at Columbia University. Poetry takes its rightful place in her life--neck and neck with teaching. Charan’s performance poetry has reached audiences throughout the Midwest and East Coast. She has shared a stage with Gill Scott-Heron, The Last Poets, Staceyann Chin, Ishle Park, Tara Betts, Climbing Poetree, Lemon Anderson and others. Her work fuels public dialogue around colorism, homophobia and the effects of war. Of course, sometimes she writes about being human. To find out more about her work as a poet and educator visit: www.charanp.com.
Zahra Murphy Patterson is the author of many unpublished short stories including Ari and the Oak, Solo Fly, That Music is Intensest (title taken from a Wallace Stevens poem) and the novel The Monster’s Fool. Her next project intends to be an (as yet) untitled piece of revisionist history that grapples with environmentalism, isolationism, humanitarianism and obsession. She is also the imagination behind Raw Fiction and this launch event and hopes everyone is having a great time.
Jesse Perlstein has been involved in the NYC art scene for the last four years performing with bands such as Sontag Shogun and acclaimed post-baroque sextet, [the] slowest runner [in all the world]. Although music was the driving force of his creative outlet for years, he has been drawing, painting, and writing all the while. His work varies from the abstract to the absurd, as he uses the brush, the pen, and the page, to touch on the arbitrary inspirations that worm through his brain like angry Shai-Huluds (yes, that's a Dune reference). His influences stem from both fantasy and reality, generally blending the two in Daliesque Surrealist fashion. That and comic books. He loves comic books.
Shawn(ta) Smith is your lesbian librarian currently editing the anthology, Her Saturn Returns, interviews, essays, and prose by or about queer women of color in their first or second Saturn Return-process of turning 30 or turning 60. The collection will embrace the most tumultuous time of their lives, and how being queer and of color shapes this very fragile period. Smith studies Fiction at Queens College in their MFA program in Creative Writing and Translation, and is a Substitute Faculty Librarian at the CUNY Grad Center Mina Rees Library where she is the LGBT Studies liaison and helps digitize the Activist Women's Voices collection. In her spare time, Shawn co-produces Rivers of Honey, a monthly cabaret highlighting the art of womyn of color, and archives at the Lesbian Herstory Archives.
Charity Thomas might very well be insane. She’s a writer who likes to write but hates writing. She’s working out a way to communicate herself as a writer without so much work. She works on television shows and commercials to make money and ends up having a little fun in the process. She recognizes what a fantastic life she has. She’s loved and loves immensely.
Yaz Barakat is from Jordan. He studied Film/Video in Rhode Island and has previously worked in animation and television production in Amman and Boston. He has lived in Astoria since 2004 and currently works at Doctors Without Borders. He enjoys writing, live music and strange art.
Tanya M. Beltram is a Bronx native and is a recent graduate of Manhattanville College's Masters in Writing Program, where she served as Inkwell Journal's Editor-in-chief. As a National Writers Union member she is on the board of their 501(C)(3), NWUSO. Beltram is also a scientific publisher contracting as a liason between the pharmaceutical industry and the FDA. Creatively, she is mostly known for sharing her written work during open mic nights and literary events, and currently she is finishing her first poetry chapbook.
Phyllis Capello is a writer\musician and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellow in fiction. Since 1984, she has been a teaching poet-in-residence with many organizations including Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Her poems appear in many anthologies and, since 1991, she has been a member of The Big Apple Circus Clown Care Unit as "Dr." Ukulele Lady, troubadour/clown, she's one of the performers who bring the joy and excitement of classical circus to the bedsides of hospitalized children all year 'round.
Erica Cardwell is a queer artist, director, educator, and part time techno-phobe. She is an advocate for spiritual activism, sexual liberation and rock n roll. Her work centers on deconstructing the imagery and social perspectives of marginalized and silenced peoples. She writes about art, womanism, girlhood, identity, language and ambiguous intention. Her essays have been featured in Ikons Magazine, the London Progressive Journal, and the Australian Dance Collaborative, "the Paper.” In 2009, she was a writer in residence at PAF in St. Erme, France, researching her performance bio, "Saintete". Erica lives in the land of make believe, Astoria, Queens and currently, she is doing Community Outreach at the Hetrick Martin Institute while also at work on a biographical project inspired by the life of French poet and playwright, Jean Genet.
By Day Olivia Ford occasionally writes, but mostly edits, for a phenomenal HIV/AIDS website, TheBody.com. She feels privileged to be able to fill her life with others' writing as an editor -- and attend others' births, as a trained doula -- though she's something of a writer herself, and an aspiring mom. By night her stuff's more prose-y, though hopefully not prosaic, or too sodden with puns like that one right there. She often uses birth metaphors because witnessing children enter the world, and women be born and reborn as parents, has added a unique dimension to her life. Themes/obsessions in her writing include family, empathy, the spectrum of obligation, various forms of unrequited affection.
George Hagen has lived on three continents, worked as a screenwriter in Los Angeles and written magazine pieces and cartoons. His novels, The Laments and Tom Bedlam, have been published in over ten countries, and translated into many languages, including French, Dutch, German, Italian, Swedish, Polish, Russian and Hebrew.
Eugene Hwang was born in Lubbock Texas and raised in Norwood New Jersey. The first occupation he ever wanted to have, at the age of three, was Superman. Between then and finally settling on writer, he wanted to be an architect, a professional soccer player, and a guitar god, in that order. If you graph the practicality of his desired occupations versus time you get, more or less, a parabola, with "Superman" and "writer" sharing the same y-coordinate. In 2007, Eugene received an MFA in Fiction in 2007 from New School University. He currently runs a pair of urban wear retail stores in Plainfield NJ and does much of his writing by dictating to his iPhone during his hour-long commutes.
Darwin Johnson bought his first computer, a Commodore 64 in 1982 and has been programming ever since. One of the more unique aspects of the Commodore 64 is it contains a music chip called the SID chip, that is still used to make electronic music today. Darwin's early programming experience with the SID Chip oriented him towards computers as musical instruments. He presently makes live electronic banjo music under the moniker schwaahed. Today he will be playing the acoustic banjo, which he learned on Pete Seegar’s knee, accompanied by Paul Grundl.
Susan Kent is a small town Georgia girl in the big city who is trying to work through her myriad psychological issues that arose as a result of being a small town Georgia girl. A freelance writer living in Park Slope, she spends her days writing web articles for life coaches and sporadically works on stories for her memoir and blog, Southern Discomforts. She is co-producer of Tell It: Brooklyn and can be seen performing live in storytelling events around NYC including The Moth StorySLAM, Barbershop Stories and 826 NYC’s Knight of Time.
Charan P. Morris is a poet/educator transplanted from Chicago to New York. A 2011-12 LAMBDA Literary Foundation Fellow, her work has been published in New York University’s Gallatin Review, Brownstone Magazine, Sinister Wisdom and is forthcoming in Kweli Journal. In addition to being a NYC public school educator for the past eight years, she has facilitated poetry workshops with diverse groups of writers including formerly incarcerated youth and graduate students at Columbia University. Poetry takes its rightful place in her life--neck and neck with teaching. Charan’s performance poetry has reached audiences throughout the Midwest and East Coast. She has shared a stage with Gill Scott-Heron, The Last Poets, Staceyann Chin, Ishle Park, Tara Betts, Climbing Poetree, Lemon Anderson and others. Her work fuels public dialogue around colorism, homophobia and the effects of war. Of course, sometimes she writes about being human. To find out more about her work as a poet and educator visit: www.charanp.com.
Zahra Murphy Patterson is the author of many unpublished short stories including Ari and the Oak, Solo Fly, That Music is Intensest (title taken from a Wallace Stevens poem) and the novel The Monster’s Fool. Her next project intends to be an (as yet) untitled piece of revisionist history that grapples with environmentalism, isolationism, humanitarianism and obsession. She is also the imagination behind Raw Fiction and this launch event and hopes everyone is having a great time.
Jesse Perlstein has been involved in the NYC art scene for the last four years performing with bands such as Sontag Shogun and acclaimed post-baroque sextet, [the] slowest runner [in all the world]. Although music was the driving force of his creative outlet for years, he has been drawing, painting, and writing all the while. His work varies from the abstract to the absurd, as he uses the brush, the pen, and the page, to touch on the arbitrary inspirations that worm through his brain like angry Shai-Huluds (yes, that's a Dune reference). His influences stem from both fantasy and reality, generally blending the two in Daliesque Surrealist fashion. That and comic books. He loves comic books.
Shawn(ta) Smith is your lesbian librarian currently editing the anthology, Her Saturn Returns, interviews, essays, and prose by or about queer women of color in their first or second Saturn Return-process of turning 30 or turning 60. The collection will embrace the most tumultuous time of their lives, and how being queer and of color shapes this very fragile period. Smith studies Fiction at Queens College in their MFA program in Creative Writing and Translation, and is a Substitute Faculty Librarian at the CUNY Grad Center Mina Rees Library where she is the LGBT Studies liaison and helps digitize the Activist Women's Voices collection. In her spare time, Shawn co-produces Rivers of Honey, a monthly cabaret highlighting the art of womyn of color, and archives at the Lesbian Herstory Archives.
Charity Thomas might very well be insane. She’s a writer who likes to write but hates writing. She’s working out a way to communicate herself as a writer without so much work. She works on television shows and commercials to make money and ends up having a little fun in the process. She recognizes what a fantastic life she has. She’s loved and loves immensely.
