TEAM
“...Uniquely thoughtful and gifted educators...”
–Columbia University
Adam Falkner
Founding Partner & Executive Director, Facilitator
Dr. Adam Falkner (he/him) is a poet, musician, educator and strategist with over a decade of cross-industry experience in equity & inclusion space. He is the author of The Willies (Button Poetry, 2020) and Adoption (Winner of the 2017 Diode Editions Chapbook Award), and his work has appeared in a range of print and media spaces including on programming for HBO, NBC, in the New York Times, and elsewhere. A former high school English teacher in New York City’s public schools, Adam has toured the United States as a guest artist, lecturer and trainer, and was the featured performer at President Obama’s Grassroots Ball at the 2009 Presidential Inauguration. He holds a Ph.D. in English and Education from Columbia University. www.adamfalknerarts.com
Aaron Samuels
Operations Consultant, Facilitator
Aaron Samuels (he/him) is a critically-acclaimed writer, speaker, and entrepreneur. After working at Bain & Co. for three years as a strategy consultant, Aaron left his Wall Street life to pursue his passion as a writer and builder of community. Since leaving Bain, Aaron has written a book of poetry, toured the country, performed on television, and landed himself on Forbes' coveted 30 under 30 list as a rising star in the tech and media space. Aaron Samuels is the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Blavity, a digital community for Black Millennials with over 1 million website viewers per month. When he is not at Blavity, Aaron is a nationally touring poet and performer. His debut collection of poetry, Yarmulkes & Fitted Caps was released on Write Bloody Publishing in fall 2013. Aaron Samuels is Black and Jewish. www.aaronsamuelspoetry.com
Lauren whitehead
Program Director, Facilitator
Lauren Whitehead (she/her) is an Assistant Arts Professor at Tisch Drama. She is a writer, performer, and dramaturg, and writes in several forms including poetry, nonfiction, adaptations, and drama. Whitehead adapted Ta-Nehisi Coates’ award winning memoir, Between the World and Me, for staging at the Apollo Theater and the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts (Dir. Kamilah Forbes). Her most recent performances include originating the lead role of “Un/Sung” in the opera We Shall Not Be Moved, which she performed at the Wilma Theater, the Apollo Theater, and at the Stadsschouwburg Theater in Amsterdam (Dir. Bill T. Jones). Whitehead is a Sundance Theater Lab Fellow, a Sundance Talent Forum Fellow, and she has worked as a dramaturg at Hedgebrook and at the Denver Center for Performing Arts. Prior to joining the faculty at NYU, Whitehead was a part-time lecturer at the New School for Drama and was a Teaching Fellow in the Undergraduate Writing Program at Columbia University. www.laurenawhitehead.com
Jon Sands
Program Director, Facilitator
Jon Sands (he/him) is a winner of the 2018 National Poetry Series, selected for his second book, It’s Not Magic (Beacon Press, 2019). Since March, he’s been hosting an interview series on IG Live called Ps & Qs. You can follow him at @iAmJonSands. His work has been featured in the New York Times, as well as anthologized in The Best American Poetry. He teaches at Brooklyn College, Urban Word NYC, and for over a decade has facilitated a weekly writing workshop for adults at Baily House, an HIV/AIDS service center in East Harlem. He tours extensively as a poet, but lives in Brooklyn. As Program Director, he works extensively with DAP’s booking partners to design and personalize the DAP workshop experience www.iamjonsands.com
SofíA Snow
Facilitator
Sofía Snow (she/her) is a Boston-raised multimedia artist, educator, and arts administrator. Her work has been featured in a range of publications, television, and theater, as well as in The Boston Globe, Cosmopolitan Magazine, American Girl, WWE Network, The Public Theater, and elsewhere. Sofía is currently the Executive Director of the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives and the First Wave Scholarship Program at the University of Wisconsin.
Elana Bell
Facilitator
Elana Bell (she/her) is the author of Mother Country (BOA Editions in 2020), poems about fertility, motherhood, and mental illness. Elana’s debut collection of poetry, Eyes, Stones (LSU Press 2012), was selected by Fanny Howe as the winner of the 2011 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, and brings her complex heritage as the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors to consider the difficult question of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Elana is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the Jerome Foundation, the Edward Albee Foundation, and the Brooklyn Arts Council. Her writing has appeared in AGNI, Harvard Review, and the Massachusetts Review, among others. www.elanabell.com
Carlos Andres Gomez
Facilitator
Carlos Andrés Gómez (he/him) is a Colombian American poet, speaker, actor, and author of Fractures, winner of the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry, Hijito, winner of the Broken River Prize and a #1 SPD bestseller, and the memoir Man Up: Reimagining Modern Manhood, released by Penguin Random House. A star of HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, TV One’s Verses and Flow, and Spike Lee’s #1 box office movie Inside Man with Denzel Washington, Carlos’ honors include the Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry, Atlanta Review International Poetry Prize, Foreword INDIES Gold Medal, and the International Book Award for Poetry. A genre-transcending multi-hyphenate, he partnered with John Legend on Senior Orientation, a program to counteract bullying and champion inclusive masculinity among high school students. Carlos is a proud father of two. www.CarlosLive.com
Samantha Thornhill
Facilitator
Samantha Thornhill (she/her) is a published author, educator and performance poet from Trinidad and Tobago. She has appeared in literary and arts festivals from South Africa to Hungary and frequently lectures at universities across the US. A language arts educator, Samantha currently facilitates creative writing workshops for Poets & Writers Inc., and serves as writer in residence at the Bronx Academy of Letters, where she teaches nonfiction and journalism. For the past decade, she teaches poetry and performance to actors in training at the Juilliard School, where she also serves on the audition board for the drama division. She has been the recipient of the Henry Hoyns Fellowship to the University of Virginia, travel grants to Trinidad and Cuba, as well as residences at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Squaw Valley, Cave Canem and Hedgebrook. In 2012, she was featured on Bill Moyers’ website for “Poets Under 40 to Watch.” www.samanthaspeaks.com
Nate Marshall
Facilitator
Nate Marshall (he/him) is a writer, rapper, and educator from the South Side of Chicago. He is the author of FINNA (One World, Penguin Random House, 2020), Wild Hundreds (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), winner of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association’s award for Poetry Book of the Year and The Great Lakes College Association’s New Writer Award. Marshall is also an editor of The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop (Haymarket Books, 2015) and the co-author, with Eve L. Ewing, of No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks. He previously served as the Assistant Director of Wabash College’s Malcolm X Institute of Black Studies where he was also a Visiting Assistant Professor of English and Black Studies. He has received fellowships from Cave Canem, The Poetry Foundation, and The University of Michigan. He is an Assistant Professor of English at Colorado College. www.natemarshallpoetry.com
Aziza Barnes
Facilitator
Aziza Barnes (they/them) is a Los Angeles-based poet, playwright and performer. They earned a BFA from New York University and an MFA from the University of Mississippi. Barnes is author of full-length collections the blind pig (2019) and i be but i ain’t (2016), which won a Pamet River Prize, and the chapbook me Aunt Jemima and the nailgun (2013), which won an Exploding Pinecone Prize from Button Poetry. Barnes’s first play, BLKS (2017), debuted at Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago. In poems and performances that interrogate and deconstruct assumptions around gender, race, and class, Barnes seeks to liberate and pluralize languages of identity. A Callaloo fellow and member of the Dance Cartel and the Divine Fabrics collective, Barnes has been an editor at Kinfolks Quarterly and a cofounder of the Poetry Gods podcast. Their honors and awards include a Tangerine Award, an NYU Grey Art Gallery Prize for Radical Presence, and an Emerging Poets fellowship at Poets House. Barnes lives in Oxford, Mississippi.
JIVE POETIC
Facilitator
Jive Poetic is a writer, organizer, and educator based in Brooklyn. He received his BA in Media Studies from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and his MFA in Writing and Activism from Pratt Institute. In 2017 Jive was the first recipient of the John Morning Award for Art and Service. He is the founder of Insurgent Poets Society, Carnival Slam: Cultural Exchange, and the co-founder of the Brooklyn Poetry Slam. International recognition and support for his work has come from the British Arts Council; US Embassies in Australia, Brazil, and Poland; and the Minister Of Culture in Antigua and Barbuda. Currently, Jive is the Friday night poetry slam curator and host at the Nuyorican Poet’s Café. More above Jive & his forthcoming book from Norton.
CAROLINE ROTHSTEIN
Facilitator
Caroline Rothstein (she/her) is a New York City-based award-winning writer, poet, and performer. She has been performing poetry, facilitating workshops and teaching at colleges, schools and performance venues worldwide for over a decade. Her work has appeared in Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire,BuzzFeed, Narratively, The Forward, and elsewhere. Caroline and her work have been featured widely including in The New Yorker, MTV News, Chicago Tribune, The Huffington Post, Mic, Bustle, and Newsweek. She is the Creative Writing faculty for Brandeis University’s BIMA precollege summer arts-intensive program, on faculty for the Foundation for Jewish Camp's annual Cornerstone Fellowship, and is a Youth Mentor at Urban Word NYC. She sits as President Emeritus of the Board of Directors for Mental Fitness, Inc., and has a B.A. in classical studies from the University of Pennsylvania, and an M.S. from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.www.carolinerothstein.com
ROYA MARSH
Facilitator
Roya Marsh (she/her) is a Bronx, New York, native and a nationally recognized poet, performer, educator, and activist. She is the Poet in Residence at Urban Word NYC and she works feverishly toward LGBTQIA justice and dismantling white supremacy. Marsh’s work has been featured on NBC, BET, Button Poetry, Write About Now Poetry, Def Jam’s All Def Digital, and in Poetry magazine, Flypaper Magazine, Frontier Poetry, The Village Voice, Nylon, Huff Post, Lexus Verses and Flow, and The BreakBeat Poets Volume 2: Black Girl Magic (Haymarket 2018).
Mahogany l. browne
Facilitator
Mahogany L. Browne (she/her) is a writer, organizer & educator. She is the Executive Director of the Bowery Poetry Club & the Artistic Director of Urban Word NYC and has over two decades of experience curating and facilitating literary programming across the United States. She is the author of multiple books including Woke: A Young Poets Call to Justice (Roaring Brook), Woke Baby (Roaring Brook) and Black Girl Magic (Macmillan), and multiple volumes of poetry, and the recipient of fellowships from Agnes Gund, the Ford Foundation, Cave Canem, Poets House, Mellon Research & Rauschenberg, and more. She is currently at work completing her first book of essays on the impact of mass incarceration on women and children. www.mobrowne.con