Alfred Nicol is this year's recipient of The Robert Frost Foundation Poetry Award. Nicol's book of poetry, Elegy for Everyone, published in 2009, was chosen for the first Anita Dorn Memorial Prize. He received the 2004 Richard Wilbur Award for an earlier volume, Winter Light. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Dark Horse, The Formalist, The Hopkins Review, and other literary journals. His most recent publication is Second Hand Second Mind, a collaboration with his sister, the artist Elise Nicol (available at www.blurb.com).
Anthony Febo is a poet, actor, youth worker, lover and friend. He founded Mill City Slam, the adult slam poetry scene, and M.O.M.S. the Middlesex/UMass Lowell college slam poetry scene in 2010. Along side his fellow partners in rhyme, in 2009 he founded FreeVerse!, a youth organization dedicated to expand the presence of spoken word in the city of Lowell. He is a lover of theatre and art, a strong believer that poetry is something we live, and a pretty good dancer.
Elisabeth Houston was born and raised in Brookline, Massachusetts. She graduated from Yale, where she studied history and then from Boston University's MFA program in poetry. She currently teaches college literature to women who are incarcerated through Boston University's Prison Education Program.
Enzo Silon Surin is a Haitian-born poet and social advocate. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University and is currently Assistant Professor in English at Bunker Hill Community College and Visiting Instructor in English at Salem State University. He is the author of the chapbook, HIGHER GROUND (Finishing Line Press, 2006), which was nominated for a Massachusetts Book Award. His poetry has appeared in numerous publications and has won the David L. Osgood Poetry Prize, Boston Mayor's Poetry and Prose Competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
As a writing performer, Erich Haygun has represented Boston, MA, Providence, RI and Vancouver, BC at international poetry competitions and has toured throughout North America and Europe. Haygun is also a resident, organizer and recording artist for the DIY record label/ house venue/ social anarchy The Whitehaus Family Record, as well as a volunteer outreach speaker and poet laureate for the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, and producer of the monthly omnigenre variety show CHEAP SEATS.
Jade Sylvan is one of the standout artists in the Boston Collectivist art movement. She's an award-winning, internationally-touring poet and nonfiction writer whose poetry and essays have been published in The Toast, BuzzFeed, PANK, and over twenty more journals, websites, and magazines. She's the author of the autobiographical novel Kissing Oscar Wilde (Write Bloody Press, 2013) and the poetry collection The Spark Singer (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2009). In 2012, she cowrote and starred in the feature film TEN (2014), and wrote the accompanying novel. Jade’s received artist grants from The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and Amethyst Arsenic, and was nominated “Best Poet” by the Boston Phoenix newspaper in 2013. Jade can be seen frequently getting up to queer feminist performative no-good on- and offstage in and around Cambridge.
Jennifer Jean’s most recent poetry collection is The Fool (Big Table Publishing). Other poetry collections include: The Archivist, Fishwife, and In the War; as well, she's released Fishwife Tales, a collaborative CD comprised of art songs and accompanied recitations. Her poetry and prose have been published in numerous journals and anthologies, including: Drunken Boat, Tidal Basin Review, Denver Quarterly, Caketrain, Poetica, and The Mom Egg Journal. Jennifer is a volunteer blogger for Amirah, a website advocating for sex-trafficking survivors; she’s a principal organizer of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival; and, she teaches writing at Salem State University. For more about Jennifer, visit: www.fishwifetales.com.
Kemi Alabi is a poet, performer and teaching artist from Mequon, WI. In September, she earned her BA in Political Science & Philosophy from Boston University, where she spent three years facilitating weekly writing and performance workshops with spoken word collective Speak for Yourself. She currently lives in Boston, where she writes and performs work on the double consciousness and malformation of marginalized identities within the dominant culture.
Maggie Dietz is the author of Perennial Fall (University of Chicago, 2006) and co-editor of three anthologies related to her long-time work as director of the Favorite Poem Project. She teaches English and creative writing at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
Melissa J. Varnavas is a graduate of Pine Manor College, Solstice MFA program in creative writing, poetry. Her poetry has appeared in the literary journals Oberon, Margie, and Blast Furnace. As a journalist, she has earned awards from the New England Press Association, Massachusetts Press Association, Suburban Newspapers of America, and the Specialized Information Publishers Association, among others. She lives in Beverly, Mass., with husband artist, teacher Chris Terrell, and their two cats.
Regie Gibson is a poet, songwriter, author, workshop facilitator, and educator. Gibson and his work appear in the film Love Jones, based largely on events in his life. In 1999 he performed for the award-winning Traffic Series at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater where he adapted the work of Kurt Vonnegut. In addition, he has performed at The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago Field Museum of Natural History, and many other venues. Gibson is widely published in anthologies, magazines, and journals, such as Power Lines, An Anthology of Poetry along with Pulitzer-Prize winning poets Gwendolyn Brooks, Yosef Komunyakaa, and Lisel Mueller. His first full-length book of poetry, Storms Beneath The Skin, was released in 2001. Gibson has also taught, lectured and facilitated workshops.
Rhina P. Espaillat has published poems, essays, short stories and translations in numerous magazines and over sixty anthologies, in both English and her native Spanish, as well as three chapbooks and nine full-length books, including four in bilingual format. Her most recent honors are the May Sarton Award from the New England Poetry Club, a Lifetime Achievement in the Arts Award from Salem State College, and an award in recognition of services to Dominican letters, from the Ministry of Culture of the Dominican Republic.
Tara Skurtu (b. 1982, Key West) earned an MFA at Boston University, where she currently teaches Creative Writing. She’s a Robert Pinsky Global Fellow and a recipient of a 2013 Academy of American Poets Prize. Her work is published internationally, and has appeared in Poetry Review, The Dalhousie Review, The Los Angeles Review, B O D Y International, the minnesota review, The Southeast Review, Poet Lore, Salamander, and elsewhere.
Teisha Twomey is currently working on her MFA in Poetry at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA and is an assistant editor and reviewer at Wilderness House Press. Teisha’s work has appeared in Ibbetson Street , Fried Chicken and Coffee, The Santa Fe Literary Review, Metazen, Poetica and the "Wasn't That Special?" Anthology.
Timothy Gager is the author of ten books of short fiction and poetry. His latest, The Shutting Door (Ibbetson Street Press), is his first full length poetry book in more than eight years. He has hosted the successful Dire Literary Series in Cambridge, Massachusetts every month for the past twelve years and is the co-founder of Somerville News Writers Festival.
William Stratton was born in Norwich, NY grew up on his great-grandfather’s farm. His writing is heavily influenced by the rural landscape and people native to the area. Though his professional career started in journalism, his gradual move towards verse pushed him to pursue an MFA from the University of New Hampshire. He is an advocate of poetry even among those who might not often read it, and believes that poetry belongs to and with all people, not just poets. His poems have been nominated for a pushcart, anthologized in a best of series, and appear in a variety of print and online magazines and journals. He currently teaches at UNH.