THE POETRY QUESTION: TPQ20

Join Chris and Courtney of The Poetry Question in a sit down with Jae Nichelle, poet of page and stage, in a conversation about passions, process, pitfalls, and poetry! 

With over 50 million views on Facebook and 1 million on YouTube, Jae Nichelle is a viral spoken word artist based in Atlanta by way of Louisiana. Her work has been featured in Best New Poets 2020 and on several poetry platforms, and she's been winning poetry slams since she was 16. Her guilty pleasures include crop tops, taco bell, and starting projects that she'll never finish.

Looking for professional ghostwriting services? Check out Jae’s other site!

Join Chris and Courtney in a sit down with Praise Osawaru, Contributing Editor at Barren Magazine, Reader for Chestnut review, and 1st place winner of the 2021 Valiant Scribe Poetry Prize. 

Praise Osawaru (he/him) is a writer of Bini descent. A Best of the Net, Pushcart Prize, and Nina Riggs Poetry Award nominee; his work appears or is forthcoming in Agbowó, FIYAH, Frontier Poetry, Down River Road, The Maine Review, and Savant-Garde, among others. He's the first-place winner of the 2021 Valiant Scribe Poetry Prize, the second-place winner of the Nigerian NewsDirect Poetry Prize 2020, and a finalist for the 2021 Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize & the 2021 Dan Veach Prize For Younger poets. He's a Contributing Editor for Barren Magazine and a reader for Chestnut Review.

Join Chris, of The Poetry Question, in a one-on-one with KB, author of How To Identify Yourself with a Wound (Kallisto Gaia Press), about passions, process, pitfalls, and poetry! 

KB Brookins (also known as KB) is a Black/queer/transmasculine poet, essayist, artivist, and cultural worker from Stop Six, Fort Worth, Texas. Their poems are published or forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Electric Literature, Cincinnati Review, and other places; their essays are published in Teen Vogue, Autostraddle, and Blavity. KB is the author of How To Identify Yourself with a Wound (Kallisto Gaia Press, 2022), selected by ire’ne laura silva as winner of the 2021 Saguaro Poetry Prize. KB has received Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations, along with support from PEN America, Lambda Literary, The Watering Hole, and African American Leadership Institute - Austin, among others.

Their cultural work spans six years. In that time, KB founded and led two nonprofits (Interfaces and Embrace Austin). They have also contributed to many initiatives such as Austin’s first LGBTQIA+ quality of life survey and inclusion of chosen names on the University of Texas at Austin diplomas. Currently, they are project lead for Winter Storm Project, an arts anthology inspired by the 2021 Texas winter storm.

KB’s debut full-length poetry collection, Freedom House, is forthcoming from Deep Vellum in 2023. Currently, they are an Artivism Fellow with Broadway Advocacy Coalition. Follow them on twitter/instagram/tiktok at @earthtokb and subscribe to their sporadic opinions and updates through their newsletter Out of This World. They live in Austin, TX where they are working on new projects and trying their best.

Join Chris and Courtney of The Poetry Question as they sit down for a talk with Seema Reza about passions, process, pitfalls, and poetry! 

Seema Reza is the author of A Constellation of Half-Lives & When the World Breaks Open. Based in Maryland, she has led writing workshops within correctional facilities, military and civilian hospitals, elementary and secondary schools, and universities. She is the CEO of Community Building Art Works, a unique arts organization that encourages the use of the arts as a tool for narration, self-care and socialization among a military population struggling with emotional and physical injuries. Reza’s work with veterans is featured in the 2018 HBO documentary We Are Not Done Yet. She was awarded the Col John Gioia Patriot Award by the USO of Metropolitan Washington-Baltimore for her work with service members. An alumnus of Goddard College and VONA, she has had writing online and in print in McSweeney’s, The LA Review, The Feminist Wire, The Offing, and Entropy among others. Case studies from her work with military populations have appeared in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Related Diseases in Combat Veterans. She has performed across the country at universities, theaters, festivals, bookstores, conferences, & one fine mattress shop.

Join Chris and Courtney of The Poetry Question in a sit down with Gabrielle Bates about passion, process, pitfalls, and poetry! 

Gabrielle Bates is a writer and visual artist originally from Birmingham, Alabama. Her debut collection of poems, JUDAS GOAT, is forthcoming from Tin House in 2023. Bates's work has appeared in the New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, Ploughshares, APR, Virginia Quarterly Review, New England Review, Gulf Coast, Mississippi Review, Black Warrior Review, the Best of the Net anthology, and BAX: Best American Experimental Writing, among other journals and anthologies, and her poetry comics have been featured internationally in a variety of exhibitions, festivals, and conferences. Formerly the managing editor of the Seattle Review and a contributing editor for Poetry Northwest, Gabrielle currently serves as the Social Media Manager of Open Books: A Poem Emporium, a contributing editor for Bull City Press, and a University of Washington teaching fellow. She also volunteers as a poetry mentor through the Adroit teen mentorship program and teaches occasionally as a spotlight author through Seattle's Writers in the Schools (WITS). With Luther Hughes and Dujie Tahat, she co-hosts the podcast The Poet Salon, where poets talk over drinks.

Chris and Courtney sit down with Joel Leon, storyteller, father, poet, and recovering rapper, to talk about passions, process, pitfalls, and poetry!

Joel L. Daniels, also known as Joel Leon, is a performer, author and story-teller who writes and tells stories for Black people.

Born and raised in the Bronx, Joel specializes in moderating and leading conversations surrounding race, masculinity, mental health, creativity and the performing arts, with love at the center of his work and purpose. He is a F.H. LaGuardia High School of the Performing Arts alum, winner of the Bronx Council of the Arts BRIO Award in Poetry and is the author of "Book About Things I Will Tell My Daughter" and "God Wears Durags, Too", published by Bottlecap Press.

His recent TED talk on healthy co-parenting has been viewed over 1M times, globally. He’s worked with The Gates Foundation, Nike, Twitter and HBO, and has been featured on the TODAY Show, Insider, the Columbia Journal, BBC News, Sirius XM, Forbes, Medium, Philadelphia Printworks, Blavity, and the Huffington Post.

He lives in Brooklyn and is the father to Lilah and West.

Chris sits down with Darius Simpson, winner of the 2020 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship, to talk about all things passions, process, pitfalls, and poetry! 

Darius Simpson is a writer, educator, performer, and skilled living room dancer from Akron, Ohio. He received his BA in Political Science from Eastern Michigan University and his MFA in Creative Writing-Poetry from Mills College. Darius was a recipient of the 2020 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship.​ He hopes to inspire that feeling you get that makes you scrunch up your face after a good bite of homemade Mac N Cheese.

Darius' poems have appeared in  POETRY Magazine, The Adroit Journal, American Poetry Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and others. Currently, he lives in Oakland, CA where, as a Teaching Artist, he partners with organizations to facilitate writing and performance workshops throughout the Bay Area. Darius believes in the dissolution of empire and the total liberation of all oppressed people by any means available. Free the People. Free the Land. Free All Political Prisoners.

Chris and Courtney sit down with poet, screenwriter, and essayist, Melissa Lozada-Oliva, to talk about passions, process, pitfalls, and poetry! 

Melissa Lozada-Oliva is a Guatelombian (Guatemalan-Colombian) American poet and screenwriter living in Brooklyn by way of Massachusetts.  Their book peluda (Button Poetry 2017) explores the intersections of Latina identity, feminism, hair removal & what it means to belong. Their novel-in-verse Dreaming of You is about bringing Selena back to life through a seance & the disastrous consequences that follow & it’s coming out October 2021 on Astra House.

Chris and Courtney sit down with Kazim Ali, Editor/Founder of Nightboat Books, and Department Chair for Literature at UC San Diego, about all things passions, process, pitfalls, poetry... and Choose Your Own Adventure!

KAZIM ALI was born in the United Kingdom and has lived transnationally in the United States, Canada, India, France, and the Middle East. His books encompass multiple genres, including the volumes of poetry Inquisition, Sky Ward, winner of the Ohioana Book Award in Poetry; The Far Mosque, winner of Alice James Books’ New England/New York Award; The Fortieth Day; All One’s Blue; and the cross-genre texts Bright Felon and Wind Instrument. His novels include the recently published The Secret Room: A String Quartet and among his books of essays are the hybrid memoir Silver Road: Essays, Maps & Calligraphies and Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Practice. He is also an accomplished translator (of Marguerite Duras, Sohrab Sepehri, Ananda Devi, Mahmoud Chokrollahi and others) and an editor of several anthologies and books of criticism. After a career in public policy and organizing, Ali taught at various colleges and universities, including Oberlin College, Davidson College, St. Mary's College of California, and Naropa University. He is currently a Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego. His newest books are a volume of three long poems entitled The Voice of Sheila Chandra and a memoir of his Canadian childhood, Northern Light.

Chris sits down for a one-on-one with Reagan Myers, author of Afterwards (Button Poetry), to talk about passions, process, pitfalls, poetry... and YA lit!

Reagan Myers

Instagram @reagancmyers | Facebook @reagancmyers | Twitter @reagancmyers

Reagan is the youngest Grand Slam champion to ever come out of Nebraska, and was the first woman to hold the title in seven years. She’s been to two National Poetry Slams as a member of the Omaha team, founded and represented the University of Nebraska-Lincoln at the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational for two years, and was the Woman of the World Poetry Slam Nebraska rep for 2016, in addition to being a member of different teams for regional competitions. You can see her work on Button Poetry, which has accumulated over 2.5 million views, and has also been written about in The Huffington Post, Bustle, and Everyday Feminism. She is currently working on her Masters degree in composition and rhetoric at the University of Nebraska.

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