Line Breaks Hip Hop Theater Festival 2023

Paul Tran is the author of the debut poetry collection, All the Flowers Kneeling (Penguin, 2022), which won the Golden Poppy Award and was a finalist for the PEN Open Book Award, Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and Lambda Literary Award. Their work appears in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. A recipient of the Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Prize, as well as fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, Stanford University, and the National Endowment for the Arts, Paul is an Assistant Professor of English and Asian American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Nate Marshall is a writer, editor, and educator from Chicago. He is the award-winning author of two full-length books of poems, Finna and Wild Hundreds. He is an editor of The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop. He is also the author of the audio drama Bruh Rabbit & The Fantastic Telling of Remington Ellis, Esq. and co-author (with Eve L. Ewing) of the play No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks. Marshall is an assistant professor in the creative writing program at The University of Wisconsin-Madison. His work has been published in Chicago Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, and elsewhere. Currently he is at work on a new book of poems and several other writing projects.

Amanda Torres (AT) is a queer, Mexican-American writer, educator & cultural organizer living in Massachusetts. AT has been performing and teaching writing for eighteen years throughout the Midwest & Northeast as well as the UK. The former program director of the Poetry Foundation’s National Incubator for Community Engaged Poets, as well as the co-founder and former director of MassLEAP, a youth literary organization in Boston, they are a designer and curator of justice-oriented, arts-based learning spaces. In the classroom, AT creates radical, imaginative and care-centered labs for creativity, self-reflection & the navigation of power with/in institutions & relationships. Their artistry is a lovingly made, and often collaborative, ofrenda to their ancestors and a belief in the strange and the tender. Their writing can be found in print in LatiNext, a Breakbeat Poetry Anthology & At Our Best: Building Youth-Adult Partnerships in Out-of-School Time Settings. AT received their M.Ed from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2021. They currently work as a freelance editor, curriculum developer and teaching fellow at their alma mater and are working on a poetry manuscript in which they hope to write the people they love into the future.

Azura Tyabji (13th Cohort) is the author of two collections, Stepwell (Poetry Northwest, 2018) and Dear Azula, I Have a Crush on Danny Phantom (2021). She was the 2018-19 Seattle and West Coast Youth Poet Laureate. She writes from her perspective as a Black and Indian-American woman using writing to imagine an empathetic and liberatory future. Currently, she studies Creative Writing and Sociology as a 13th cohort First Wave scholar.

Diya Abbas (14th Cohort) is a first-generation Pakistani American poet from the Midwest. They are the 2022 George B. Hill Poetry Prize winner and the 2020 St.Louis Youth Poet Laureate. Her work can be found in The Offing, BahrMag, Button Poetry, Illumination Journal, and others. Diya is a First Wave and FLAS Scholar at the University of Wisconsin Madison studying Creative Writing and Psychology.

Jackson “Jax” Neal (12th Cohort) is a poet, dancer and choreographer from Houston, Texas currently based in Madison, Wisconsin. Neal uses movement and language as technologies of intimacy which he engages in various mediums including but not limited to: poetry, essay, dance, physical theater, performance art, and endurance tests. He believes that literature and embodied movement demand a profound honesty and commitment which move the artist and the audience toward their own goodness. Neal is a former National Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador to the Southwestern United States, selected by the Library of Congress and Urban Word NYC. His debut chapbook, “Dear Azula, I Have a Crush on Danny Phantom” co-authored with Azura Tyabji, was published by Button Poetry in 2021. Neal has trained in contemporary dance and physical theater techniques across the United States and Germany. His dance and poetry have been performed on stages such as the Dock 11 Theater, Tanzfabrik UferStudios, The Kennedy Center for the Arts, the National YoungArts Foundation, the Library of Congress, and the Overture Center for the Arts. Neal is a First Wave Scholar at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, the only full tuition scholarship for Hip Hop and Spoken Word Artists in the world. Neal graduates with a dual B.S. in Dance and English in Spring 2023.

Shasparay (First Wave alumna) (she/they) is a Black, fat and queer performing artist who is the Founder and Artistic Director of the annual Black Arts Matter Festival and was the 2022 4th Ranked Woman Slam Poet in the World (W.OW.P.S). Recently featured in the New York Times, Shasparay is a current graduate student pursuing an MA in Arts and Creative Enterprise Leadership at the Wisconsin School of Business Bolz Center and holds a B.S. in Theatre from UW-Madison. She was a recipient of the First Wave Hip Hop and Urban Arts Full Tuition Scholarship, a speaker at the 2016 TEDxYouth Austin conference, and is a National NAACP ACT-SO Gold Medalist. Shasparay has been a finalist in national and regional slam competitions such as Women of the World Poetry Slam, Stone Wall International Poetry Slam, Southern Fried Poetry Slam, Texas Grand Slam, and is a two-time Lip Stick Wars Poetry Slam Champion.  She has been featured on platforms such as Button Poetry, Huffington Post, Youth Speaks, Buzzfeed and is a cast member of the award-winning horror anthology podcast Old Gods of Appalachia.

Dr. Eve L. Ewing is a sociologist of education and a writer from Chicago. She is the author, most recently, of a book for young readers Maya and the Robot, the poetry collection 1919 and the nonfiction work Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side. Her first book, the poetry collection Electric Arches, received awards from the American Library Association and the Poetry Society of America and was named one of the year’s best books by NPR and the Chicago Tribune. She is the co-author (with Nate Marshall) of the play No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks. She also currently writes the Champions series for Marvel Comics and previously wrote the acclaimed Ironheart series, as well as other projects. Ewing is an assistant professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and many other venues. Currently she is working on her next book, Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism, which will be published by One World.

Jamila Woods is a Chicago-bred singer-songwriter, educator, and award-winning poet whose inspirations include Gwendolyn Brooks and Toni Morrison. Following the 2016 release of her debut album HEAVN via Chicago label Closed Sessions, Jamila received critical acclaim for her singular genre-blending sound that is both rooted in soul and wholly modern. Her sophomore album LEGACY! LEGACY! was released via JagJaguwar Records in 2019. It features 12 tracks named after writers, thinkers, and visual artists who have influenced her life and work.  As a touring artist, Jamila has shared stages with Corinne Bailey Rae, Rafael Saadiq, Common, Brittany Howard, and many others. A Pushcart Prize-winning poet, her work was featured in the Library of America anthology African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song (2020). Jamila recently made her television debut, performing SULA (Paperback) on Colbert on Jan 6th, 2021, and is currently conceptualizing her next album due out Oct 2023.