The 2018 Jack Straw Writers, selected by Curator Daemond Arrindell, are Daniel Atkinson, Danielle Bero, Kamari Bright, Jalayna Carter, Meredith Clark, Bryan Edenfield, Corbin Louis, Sarah Maria Medina, Natasha Kochicheril Moni, Juan Carlos Reyes, Dujie Tahat, and Rachel Trignano.
Listen: Original music inspired by the 2018 Jack Straw Writers, from the Bushwick Book Club Seattle
Meet our 2018 Jack Straw Writers
Daniel Atkinson READ MORE >
Daniel Atkinson received his Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the University of Washington, Seattle in 2011. His research focus is on Afro-American vernacular expression and its interaction with the global landscape. His dissertation research was conducted at the former slave plantation turned world’s largest prison, Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana. The research was designed to serve as a platform to discuss issues of economic disparity and institutional racism as products of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution as well as to preserve some of the remaining a cappella gospel tradition at the prison. That research is now featured at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American history and Culture. He is currently working on the first historical biography of Vaudevillian and founding father of the Harlem Renaissance, George W. “Nash” Walker (1872-1911), and is the curator of the Global Rhythms concert series at Town Hall, Seattle.
2018 Writers Program
Danielle Bero READ MORE >
Danielle Bero was born in Queens to hippie parents, given a dose of Shel Silverstein, Tupac, Jazz and classic rock. Danielle is a Posse and Fulbright scholar, teacher and co-founded a school for students in foster-care. She received a master’s in English Education, Educational Leadership and completed her MFA at the University of San Francisco. She’s a Jack Straw Cultural Center Fellow and is published in New American Writing, Sinister Wisdom, Lavender Review, Quiet Lightning, Mad Woman in the Attic, Juked, and Divine Feminist and Aunt Flo Anthologies. Fruit Loops is Danielle’s debut as a screenwriter and director. Bero is a lifelong creative, traveler and educator, previously the principal of a public high school in Brooklyn, looking to bring short films, open mics and music/poetry to the forefront of everyday life.
2024 Jack Straw Alumni Poetry Series:
Schooled, Ghost City Press, 2021
The House You Grew Up in Gets Knocked Down For Condos
and even though I ended it
I still won’t wipe down the lingering blood stains
or maybe it was you that ended it
or perhaps a revolver of endings
in any case, I hope the splats wear until the orange matches the morning sky
I never thought I would see many morning skies without you rolling over and
smiling or drooling or eye rolling
just rolling
rolling
until it smooths out all the edges
as I wrinkle more each day
2018 Writers Program
Kamari Bright READ MORE >
Operating with the belief that everything she creates is intended to foster understanding of self and surroundings, Kamari Bright is a poet whose work heavily reflects those themes. Recently she has been focused on introspection from a personal and societal standpoint, brought on by observations of societal shifts, losses of loved ones, and assimilation pressures. The St. Louis-born creative has had work displayed in exhibits, featured in publications, and released her first poetry book, Emergence, in 2016.
2018 Writers Program
Jalayna Carter READ MORE >
Jalayna Carter is a storyteller with pieces published in a handful of journals including Puerto Del Sol, Third Point Press, and Reality Beach, as well as an anthology by 2Leaf Press: Black Lives Have Always Mattered. Originally from St. Louis, MO, she studied literature and journalism in the Midwest before pursuing nonprofit communications. Her work primarily focuses on fear, the taboo, and dysfunction, particularly within the body and as a learned behavior. You can find her on IG (@just.jalayna) and Twitter (@just_jalayna).
2018 Writers Program
Meredith Clark READ MORE >
Meredith Clark is a poet and writer who has received Black Warrior Review‘s nonfiction prize and been named a finalist for both the 2017 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize and the 2017 Noemi Press Book Award. Her poetry has appeared in the Dusie Kollektiv and Poetry Northwest. These days, she writes about trees, bodies, fragments, and the uncategorizable.
2018 Writers Program
Bryan Edenfield READ MORE >
Bryan Edenfield was born in Arizona but has lived in Seattle since 2007. As the founder and director of the literary arts organization Babel/Salvage, he hosted and curated the Glossophonic Showcase and the Ogopogo Performance Series. His work has been published in Construction Magazine, Meekling Review, Dryland, Plinth, and Vanilla Sex Magazine, among others. He has a degree in philosophy and history from a mediocre university, so don’t worry.
2018 Writers Program
Corbin Louis READ MORE >
Corbin Louis is a poet and performer from Seattle. At age 13 Corbin found his voice in rap and spoken word. By 2008 he became the Seattle Youth Slam Champion in a citywide competition. He is a recording artist and MFA graduate of University of Washington Bothell. Corbin’s work has been featured in BAX, Atticus Review, and The Visible Verse Film Festival and more. He seeks to extend stage performance through design mediums and visual rhythm. The person people know as Corbin is a ghost bridge between things that do and do not exist. Waves and whispers of the night. The poet lives.
2018 Writers Program
Sarah María Medina READ MORE >
Sarah María Medina is a poet and a fiction/creative non-fiction writer from the American Northwest. Her writing has been published in Black Warrior Review, Prelude, Poetry NW, Raspa Literary Journal, and elsewhere. Her work appears in two anthologies: Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color (Nightboat Books, 2018), and Bettering American Poetry Vol. 2. She is an ARTIST UP Grant LAB recipient, a Caldera artist in residence, a Hugo House teaching artist, and the poetry editor at Winter Tangerine.
2018 Writers Program
Natasha Kochicheril Moni READ MORE >
Natasha Kochicheril Moni, a first-generation American of Dutch and Indian heritage, is a licensed naturopathic doctor in WA State. Her publication credits include sixty journals such as Magma, Entropy, and The Rumpus; one full-length poetry collection (The Cardiologist’s Daughter, Two Sylvias Press, 2014); and two poetry chapbooks (Lay Down Your Fleece, Shirt Pocket Press, 2017, and Nearly, Dancing Girl Press, 2018).
2018 Writers Program
Juan Carlos Reyes READ MORE >
Juan Carlos Reyes was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador. He’s the product of a math degree, though only words hold his attention anymore. His book A Summer’s Lynching won the Quarterly West 2016 novella prize. His chapbook Elements of a Bystander won the 2016 Chapbook Prize and is forthcoming with Arcadia Press. His stories, poems, and essays have appeared in Ascentos Review, KGB Lit, and Hawai’i Review, among others. He is an Assistant Professor of creative writing at Seattle University.
2018 Writers Program
Dujie Tahat READ MORE >
Dujie Tahat is a writer and political hack from Washington State. His essays on poetry and politics have been published in the Seattle Review of Books and Civic Skunk Works. Dujie serves as a contributing poetry editor for Pacific Northwest literary magazine Moss. He’s been a Seattle Poetry Slam finalist, a collegiate grand slam champion, and a Youth Speaks grand slam champion, representing Seattle at HBO’s Brave New Voices. You can find him @dujietahat on all social media.
2018 Writers Program
Rachel Trignano READ MORE >
Rachel Trignano’s poetry, fiction, and essays have been featured in NPR affiliate WABE’s Storytellers and City Lights series, poet Saul Williams’s Chorus: A Literary Mixtape, and the City of Atlanta’s Elevate public art program. Since 2010, Rachel has been performing her work in Atlanta and Denver, and is published in the Loose Change Literary Magazine anthology The Best of Loose Change, Write Club Atlanta’s Tender Bloodsport Vol. 1, and numerous other print and digital publications, including What the Hell Have I Done?, her travelogue about driving aimlessly around the United States. She produces and occasionally performs in Write Club Denver, a competitive literary series that raises money for charity. Through her work, Rachel tries to use truth and humor to relate to the reader about the joy and horror living human life can bring.
2018 Writers Program
2018 Writers Program Curator
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2018 Writers Program Curator Daemond Arrindell is a poet, playwright, performer, and teaching artist. He has performed in venues across the country and has been repeatedly commissioned by both Seattle and Bellevue Art Museums. As teaching artist, he is a faculty member of Freehold Theatre and TAT Lab: the Washington State Teaching Artist Training Lab; Adjunct faculty at Seattle University and Tacoma’s School of the Arts; and Writer-In-Residence through Seattle Arts & Lectures’ Writers in the Schools Program and Skagit River Poetry Foundation. As a writer, he is a 2013 Jack Straw Writer, a VONA Voices Writers’ Workshop fellow, and his work has been published by City Arts, Poetry NW, Specter, and Crosscut magazines. He recently co-adapted the novel Welcome To Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson into a play for Book-It Repertory Theater.
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