Meet the Writers Corps José Felipe Alvergue is currently a student in the UB Poetics program. He holds an M.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts, School of Critical Studies, and has published in avant garde journals like Nocturnes and Black Clock. His book, us look up/ there red dwells was published by Queue Books last year. José first began teaching poetry, music, and visual art to K1 students in 2001, with a focus on bilingual retention through the expression of language in all its possible forms. “Kindergarten and 1st grade students understand poetry better than anyone else, because for them Language is a constant game of discovery and learning. I think we tend to lose that feeling of unpredictable meaning which allows them to make associations in such captivating ways….I met every class and my time with them as an opportunity to enjoy the moment of possibility.” Karima Amin is a native of Buffalo, NY, who strives to preserve the art of storytelling in performances, workshops, and author visits for story lovers of all ages. In 2002, Karima was invited to share her stories in Senegal, West Africa. The author of a children’s book, The Adventures of Brer Rabbit and Friends (Dorling Kindersley, 1999), as well as several original stories which have been anthologized in African American Children’s Stories: A Treasury of Tradition and Pride (2001) and Grandma Loves You (2003), she also has produced several recordings of her retellings of traditional fables and folktales. Her CD, You Can Say That Again! (2004), earned a Parents’ Choice Foundation Gold Award in 2005. “Knowing that every culture has its stories, I believe that storytelling is a perfect medium for teaching about the customs, traditions, and history of a people…. listeners come to know that we are united by common human experiences in spite of our differences.”
Linda Drajem taught English for over 25 years to secondary students in the Buffalo Public Schools. She held the position of Staff Development Coordinator for the WNY Writing Project in 1997-1998. For the past nine years she has taught writing to undergraduate and graduate students at Buffalo State College, as well as supervising preservice English teachers. Recently she published a volume of poetry, InnerSessions, with two other poets. She holds a Ph.D. from UB in American Studies, M.A.H. from SUNY at Buffalo, B.A. in English from D’Youville College. “My own evolution as a poet and writer began with stories, first on the radio, then in Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and later the classics…I began to write creatively only after I was immersed in the WNY Writing Project, writing workshops with Just Buffalo, and, especially, one given by local poet Jimmie Gilliam. Out of these experiences I discovered the joy of finding poetry in everyday life. More importantly, I learned how vital encouragement and response are to beginning writers.” Christopher Fritton is a local artist who holds a B.A. in Philosophy and a B.A. in English from the University at Buffalo (2000), as well as an M.A. in Poetics from the University of Maine at Orono (2005). He is a published poet and professional artist whose work often integrates technical and scientific language with sentimental humanism in small, handmade, limited edition books. “When I’m teaching, I try to draw from as many different influences as possible; I love to incorporate visual art, music, and popular media into discussions about writing. It not only helps students connect with something that often seems impenetrable, but also frees them to experiment with countless formats and styles.”
Monica Angle has twenty years of experience as an art educator including teaching studio art and bookmaking to children and adults. She attended Harvard College, pursued advanced courses in printmaking and bookmaking at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and was educated as a geographer at Pennsylvania State University. She has exhibited works combining painting, printmaking and bookmaking since 1995, with solo exhibitions in academic and commercial galleries in Buffalo, NY, Charlottesville, VA and Minneapolis, MN. “As an artist and as an art educator, I find that creating a book allows us to have an experience with familiar materials, which encourages us to look at those materials in a new way and invites personal expression.”
Jerome Joseph Gentes is a Lakota-Gros Ventre American Indian. He received his B.A. in English from the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied with Maxine Hong Kingston and Peter Dale Scott and taught playwriting. He received his M.F.A. from the Graduate Program in Writing at Columbia University, where he studied writing forms and modes from American Indian oral traditions to avant-garde screenwriting. He has been published in The New York Times, Kirkus Reviews, Sightings, Out, Bandicoot, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Byzantium, Fourteen Hills, and The Writer’s Compass. “Few experiences have fostered my growth as a writer like the experience of being a teaching artist. I regularly find “models” of writing for the students, but they and their work remain the least self-conscious and most living, breathing, working, examples of writers and writing that I’ve ever known.”
Susan Hodge Anner is a poet and playwright whose work has been performed in New York, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, and Washington, D.C. Her most recent play, “Letters to The World,” was produced in 2007 as part of The Infringement Festival in Buffalo. She also teaches playwriting in the University at Buffalo’s Theatre Department. “My grandfather wrote philosophy books and besides encouraging me to become Miss America 1975, he also encouraged me to write. It began as a way of expressing the many things I couldn’t say out loud, thoughts, dreams, desires. Later it became a way of reaching out and understanding others, the ultimate act of empathy, to get inside another’s skin and imagine what it’s like to be them.”
Michael Kelleher is the Artistic Director of Just Buffalo Literary Center. In addition, he conducts bilingual writer residencies in Spanish and English. He is the author of two collections of poems, Human Scale (BlazeVOX Books, 2007) and To Be Sung (BlazeVOX Books, 2005). “My favorite part of teaching is seeing how poetry reaches the students who are hardest to reach: the ones who tune out, the ones who disrupt, the ones who sulk in the back row. It is almost inevitably those kids to whom the writing of poems means the most, because it offers them the chance to say something their own way, in their own words, without being corrected, and it is often those same students in whose eyes I see the light shine brightest.”
Sally Bittner Bonn is a poet, performer and teaching artist who earned her B.F.A. in Theatre from Syracuse University. She has been featured at poetry readings in the Rochester area and throughout southern California, as well as at the 2001 National Poetry Slam in Seattle. Orange is the most recent of her chapbooks and her work has been included in several anthologies. The Director of Youth Education at Writers & Books where she also teaches creative writing to children and adults and curates the 25 & Under Reading Series, Sally has been working with children in creative and academic environments for the last twelve years. “It is my hope and intention to create a pandemic of joy. Joy for language and joy for the sense of community that comes from collaborating. Children need to learn to love language, their own language, and find the power of using their own voices.”
Margaret Konkol is a Ph.D. student in the Poetics Program at SUNY Buffalo. She received her M.A. from the University of Virginia and her B.A. from Reed College. Her poems have found homes in Damn the Caesars, Little Red Leaves, Small Press Collective, Rude Girl Press, Buffalo Vortex and Love Factory. Currently, she is at work on a long poem affectionately dubbed Instruction Manual for Self-Created/Self-Alienating Calendars. Her article “Creeley in Age: Negative Poetics in Robert Creeley’s Late Work” appears in Jacket 31. “Poems develop out of local conditions, the political atmosphere, and daily social realities. Similar to a plant that develops shoots where the sun shines brightest, we write ourselves into the spaces we want to explore. In the classroom, I am excited to discover how every writer, every young poet, finds in poetry a way to ask new questions and uncover deeper textures of her or his own experience.”
Robin F. Brox is a poet and educator making her home on Buffalo’s West Side. A graduate of Amherst High School, she earned an M.A. in English from The University of Maine—Orono in 2005 and a B.A. in English from UB in 2001 after beginning her undergraduate career at Barnard College in New York City. The founder of Saucebox, a women’s performance series turned small press, Brox produces handmade chapbooks, broadsides, and other book arts. “Poems are the ornamental plants of literature; they come from seeds of inspiration, grow of urgent creative necessity, and burst into blossoms that reveal a truth so astonishing the world is made new. With my students, I feel honored to share in the creative process, from moments of frustration to delight, confusion to expression, poetry growing into their minds and out of their imaginations.”
Laura Nathan authored the forthcoming Insiders’ Guide to Houston; her writing has also appeared in Redbook, Cooking Light, The Writer’s Chronicle, ArtVoice, and the forthcoming anthology Screwball Television: Gilmore Girls. Previously the editor of the online magazine InTheFray, Laura has taught writing and communication skills to students in Houston, Austin, New York, Chicago, and Buffalo. She received her M.F.A. in creative nonfiction from Bennington College. “I fell in love with writing in the third grade, thanks to my language arts teacher, Mrs. Maxwell… who represented what I think a teaching artist should be: someone who encourages students to write creatively, to ask countless questions, to think––and write––outside the box. Someone who facilitates a lifelong love for writing and literature and gives her students the confidence they’ll need every step of the way.”