a curriculum vitae

EDUCATION

AWARDS

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

Gallery 37/Young Chicago Authors/Guild Complex, Summer 2000
Co-Lead Artist, co-wrote 8-week curriculum for the upcoming "Performance Poetry" Downtown program incorporating theater games, poetry workshop and a survey of the oral tradition in poetry.

Young Chicago Authors, 1999-present
Instructor, "Hip Hop Meets Poetry," collaborated with a co-instructor to design a 9-week curriculum connecting hip hop music to various literary concepts and structures

Co-instructor, afterschool performance poetry workshop at Harper High School, compiling work for an anthology as a culminating project, co-coordinating readings at Boulevard Arts Center Part-time Editor for Young Chicago Authors participant work

PEACH Club, 1999-2000
Instructor, creative writing workshops at staff in-service, family events and with Otis Elementary School students

Gallery 37/Young Chicago Authors, Summer 1999
Teaching Assistant, co-wrote 8-week creative nonfiction curriculum, completed proposal for the curriculum, and compiled time sheets, student evaluations, discipline reports

PACE Institute/Cook County Jail, Women's Division 4, 1998-1999
Volunteer Assistant Instructor with Women Writers Workshop

North Lawndale Learning Community (NLC Art), 1997-1999
Resident Artist in Creative Writing at Lathrop Academy, Paderewski and Pope Elementary Schools

Integrated Arts, Integrating Education, 1997-1998
Artist/Teacher, AmeriCorps Member at Otis Elementary, Peabody Elementary, Wells Academy High School and Northwestern Settlement House, Camp Counselor at House in the Wood camp, performed and wrote original work for Settlement House events, edited poetry written in several youth-oriented programs

CONFERENCES & WORKSHOPS ATTENDED

• Color of Violence: Women of Color, University of California-Santa Cruz, 2000
• Quincy Troupe workshop, Guild Complex, 2000
• Guild Complex Women Writers Conference, October 1997 and October 1999
• Afaa Michael Weaver workshop, Guild Complex, 1999
• Flight of the Mind: 16th Annual Writing Workshops for Women, June 1999
• Sterling Plumpp workshop, Guild Complex, 1998

PUBLICATIONS

• untitled essay in That Takes Ovaries tentatively with Crown in Fall 2001
• "Audre Lorde's The Cancer Journals and the Aftermath of Scars" (essay) in Black Feminism, tentatively September 2000.
• "Rock'n'Roll be a Black Woman" (poem) in Poetry Slam , Manic D Press, 2000.
• "Stories Told" (poem) in Obsidian III, 2000.
• "The Last Check" Womb Journeys, Sun Crumbs Publishing, 2000.
• "Sugar Blue, Harmonica Man" (poem) in Power Lines: Ten Decades of Poetry from Chicago's Guild Complex, Tia Chucha Press, Chicago, IL, 1999.
• "Cleaning a Lot on the West Side of Chicago" (poem) in Oyez Review, 1999. "Another Valentine" (poem) in Oyez Review, 1999.
• "I Saw Her" (poem) in Oyez Review, 1999.
• "Ida B. Wells" Mosaic, Fall/Winter 1999.
• "Rock'n'Roll be a Black Woman" (poem) in Rhapsody in Black, Vol. 2, No. 2, Spring 1999.
• "Two Brothers on 35th Street" (poem) in Rhapsody in Black, Vol. 2, No. 2, Spring 1999.
• "Loving You is Church" (poem) in Mosaic, Spring 1999.
• "for sonia sanchez" (poem) in Dialogue, Winter 1998.

BOOK REVIEWS

• Mother to Mother by Sindiwe Magona. QBR: The Black Book Review, Nov./Dec. 1999.
• Song for Anninho by Gayl Jones. Mosaic, Fall/Winter 1999.
• The Prisoner's Wife by asha bandele. Mosaic, Summer 1999.
• Paradise by Toni Morrison. New City, Feb. 12, 1998.

MULTIMEDIA PRESENTATIONS

• Theater on the Lake, June 2000
• Steppenwolf Theatre Arts Exchange Program, March 2000
  "Two Brothers on 35th Street" (poem) in "Words on Fire: Chicago Poets." Steppenwolf produced this creative interpretative series for youth. "Words on Fire" features the work of Nelson Algren, Li-Young Lee, Gwendolyn Brooks, myself and others in the production and in a lesson plan book about using each poet's work in classrooms.
• "I Remember..." April 2, 2000
  published several lines as part of an ongoing poem in the "I Remember..." list poem format originally created by Joe Brainard. Lines were updated throughout National Poetry Month as part of the AIDS Awareness campaign "A Day Without Art."

PERFORMANCES

• "A Birthday Tribute to James Baldwin" Chicago Cultural Center, August 2, 1997
• 1997 African Festival of the Arts, DuSable Museum
• The Note, 1997
• Roosevelt University-1997, 1999
• Guild Complex-Oct. 1997, Feb. 1998, May 1999, Jan. 2000
• Gwendolyn Brooks Center, Chicago State University, March 1998
• Columbia College-1998, 1999
• Hot House-1998, 1999
• Akainyah Gallery, March 1999
• Women & Children First bookstore, April 1999
• Chicago-Mad Bar team member, 1999 and 2000 National Poetry Slam
• 1999 Youth Summit, University of Illinois-Chicago, October 1999
• "Up Next" Program, Chicago Cultural Center, March 2000
• 'Round the Coyote Festival, the note, April 2000
• "The Rights of the Child," University of Illinois-Chicago, May 2000
• "Girls & Violence" conference, Northwestern School of Law, May 2000

posted June 2000