Audre Lorde - Monday, August 7th

A. Naomi Jackson - "Stations"
Born and raised in Brooklyn by Caribbean parents, A. Naomi Jackson is a writer of short fiction and poetry. A graduate of Williams College and a recipient of a Fulbright grant to South Africa, her work has appeared in Caribbean Beat and Chimurenga Online and is forthcoming in Mosaic and Sable magazines.

April Biggs - "To the Girl Who Lives in a Tree" and "Movement Song"
April Biggs has lived in New York for eight years and is currently pursuing an MFA in poetry at The New School. She is artistic director/choreographer of Biggs & Company, a modern dance company based in the city. She is also the founder of The Biggs, a writing collective. April resides in Brooklyn with her partner, Cub, and their five four-legged darlings.

Crystal Rodwell - "Harriet" and an excerpt from "Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference."
Crystal Rodwell is an artist who has engaged her physical senses in the aesthetic process; her crochet creations and collages captivate the tactile while her poetry, prose and songs enlist the auditory for a singular experience. She facilitates youth poetry workshops and currently attends City College in pursuit of her MA in English Language and Literacy.

Cynthia Manick - "To the Poet Who Happens to Be Black and the Black Poet Who Happens to Be a Woman"
Cynthia Manick resides in Brooklyn, New York. She is currently attending The New School for an MFA in poetry, and is working on her first book of poetry.

Donna Masini

Hettie Jones - "Now that I am Forever with Child"
Hettie Jones is the author of Drive, which won the Poetry Society of America's Norman Farber Award, All Told, and the forthcoming Doing 70, all from Hanging Loose Press. Her memoir, How I Became Hettie Jones, is available from Grove. She teaches writing at The New School and at the 92nd Street Y Poetry Center.

Jacqueline Johnson - "Between Ourselves"
Jacqueline Johnson is the winner of the 1997 third annual White Pine Press Award for Poetry. Her poetry book A Gathering of Mother Tongues was published by White Pine Press in the spring of 1998. She is at work on two new projects: a poetry book, The Place Where Memory Dwells, and a collection of short stories, Songs of Ikari.

Jen Coleman - "To a girl who knew what side her bread was buttered on" and "The seventh sense"
Jen Coleman lives in Brooklyn, works at Environmental Defense, and edits Pom2 journal with her friends (pompompress.com). You can see some of her poems at http://www.speakeasy.org/~subtext//poetry/jencoleman/ and at http://www.theeastvillage.com/t12/coleman/a.htm.

Karen Swenson - "To My Daughter The Junkie on the A Train"
Karen Swenson has published four books of poetry with Doubleday, The Smith and Copper Canyon. For the last 25 years she has traveled to Asia and has circumambulated the holy mountain, Kailash, in Tibet five times. She has taught at NYU, Denver University, Barnard, Clark, Skidmore, Scripps and the University of Idaho.

Kim Irwin - "Recreation" and "Woman"
When I was born
I didn’t know I was white
or that I would be erotic
or a feminist
or an artist
but never a mother.
I didn’t know I would love a black woman.
I didn’t know James Baldwin would tell me who I am
or I would write poetry
to no longer be white.

Lee Schwartz - excerpt from The Cancer Journals
Lee Schwartz lives a few blocks away and used to come to this spot when it was the Cafe Cino. She has published in several journals including Hidden Book Press and the Villager newspaper. She just completed an Artist in Residency at the 92nd Street Y.

Marie Ponsot– “Bicentennial Poem # 21,000,000,” “Equinox,” “Viet-nam Addenda”
Native New Yorker Marie Ponsot was born in 1921. She has published numerous works, including Springing (Alfred A. Knopf, 2002); The Bird Catcher (1998), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; The Green Dark (1988); Admit Impediment (1981); and True Minds (1957). Ponsot, who also translates books from the French, has taught in graduate programs at Queens College, Beijing United University, the Poetry Center of the YMHA, and New York University. Among her awards are a creative writing grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Prize, and the Shaughnessy Medal of the Modern Language Association. Marie Ponsot teaches in the graduate writing program at Columbia University in New York City.

Meena Alexander - "Diaspora"
Meena Alexander was born in India and raised there and in the Sudan. Her volumes of poetry include Raw Silk (2004) and Illiterate Heart ( winner of the 2002 PEN Open Book Award). Her memoir Fault Lines (in which she writes of teaching with Audre at Hunter) appeared in a new expanded edition in 2003. She is working on a new volume of autobiographical poems and a volume of essays on migration, memory and poetry.

Meghan Punschke - "A Woman Speaks"
Meghan Punschke resides in New York City and is currently attending The New School for an MFA in poetry. Her work has appeared in Free Focus. She is the host of “Word of Mouth,” a reading series in the West Village dedicated to poets and fiction writers. Her work will also appear in MiPoesias.

Nicole Sealey - "Separation" and "Revolution Is One Form of Social Change"
Nicole Sealey is a poet as well as a freelance writer and editor. Her poem, "Roots, Rock, Race," is forthcoming in Feeding the Soul: Black Music, Black Thought, an anthology published by Third World Press.

Patricia Spears Jones - "Mahalia" and "Solstice"
African American poet and playwright, Patricia Spears Jones is the author of two collections: Femme du Monde (Tia Chuca Press, 2006) and The Weather That Kills (Coffee House Press, 1995) and the play 'Mother'. She was co-editor of the ground-breaking, multi-cultural anthology: Ordinary Women in 1978

Rashidah Ismaili - "Song in Many Movements
Rashidah Ismaili is a writer of poetry, short stories and plays. Her works appear in journals and anthologies widely. She has two collections of poems in print a play and a collection of short stories is due out this fall. She teaches in an MA program in Creative Writing at Wilkes University in PA and is working on a memoir.

Samiya Bashir - "Who Said It Was Simple"
Samiya Bashir is the author of the Lammy-Award nominated poetry collection Where the Apple Falls, editor of Best Black Women's Erotica 2 and co-editor of Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social & Political Black Literature & Art. Bashir is a graduate of the Cave Canem Poetry Workshop and a founding organizer of Fire & Ink: Writer's Festival for LGBT Writers of African Descent.

Siobhan Ciminera - "A Litany for Survival"
Siobhan Ciminera is about to start her second year as a poetry MFA student at The New School. When she isn’t being a poet, she’s working at Penguin Young Readers Group where she edits children’s books.

Susan Brennan - "From the House of Yemanja" and "Vigil"
Susan Brennan's poetry appears in Terra Incognita (translated), Unpleasant Events Schedule, Calabash Journal, Painted Bride Quarterly, Cake Train and Margie. She is the producer and host of Radio Poetique, an on-line audio archive.

Suzanne Gardinier - "Power" and "Today Is Not the Day"
Suzanne Gardinier is the author of a long poem called "The New World" and a book of essays on poetry and politics called A World That Will Hold All the People. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence and lives in Manhattan.

Tara Betts - "School Note" and "jessehelms"
Tara Betts, an MFA candidate at New England College and Cave Canem graduate, has worked as an educator, performer, freelance writer, arts administrator and activist. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, Women's Studies Quarterly, Essence, FEMSPEC, at the National Poetry Slam and on HBO's Def Poetry Jam.

Terri Muuss - "Coal" and "Electric Slide Boogie"
Terri Muuss is an actor, poet, teacher, director, and social worker. She is the writer and performer of the one-woman show Anatomy of a Doll, which she has appeared in at numerous theaters, conferences, high schools and universities throughout New York City and Long Island, as well as in Washington DC, California, and Canada. The show received The Daily News’ “Best Theatre-Pick of the Week” for its initial run in the city. But Terri's most challenging and rewarding role is being mother to her beautiful 7 month old son, Rainer.

Tracey McTague - Selections from the Epilogue of A Burst of Light
Tracey McTague lives at the geographic apex of Brooklyn on Battle Hill where she curates a reading series of the same name, co edits Lungfull! Magazine and cooks up covers for the Poetry Project Newsletter. She is a writer and visual artist whose work includes a number of chapbooks. She vandalizes private property on a regular basis.

Vickie Karp - "Never to Dream of Spiders" and "For Each of You"
Vickie Karp’s first book, A Taxi to the Flame, was published in 1999. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and anthologies including David Lehman’s Best American Poetry series. Her forthcoming documentary play on W. H. Auden and Carson McCullers – “Venus Will Now Say A Few Words” -- will premiere in 2007/2008.