FLOW: Do You Know My Name

L. D. Barnes is a life-long Chicagoan, proud of her beginnings on the West Side. She attended Roosevelt University and the Art Institute of Chicago before spending her work life at several cultural, medical, political, broadcasting and corporate institutions. Starting her writing with IT training guides, disaster recovery manuals and other technical pieces, she expanded into Star Trek fan fiction, short stories and following in her father’s footsteps, the occasional poem. She joined the Beverly Art’s Center Writers Group, where she edited and contributed to their literary magazine, the BAC Street Journal.

Tina Jenkins Bell is a published fiction writer, playwright, freelance journalist, and literary activist. She is a three-time DCASE Individual Artist Project grant recipient, an Illinois Arts Council grant recipient, a two-time Ragdale resident, and a 2015 short story fellow with Colgate University and the Midwest Writer’s Conference. Currently, Bell has been asked to compile a proposal for an anthology focusing on Gary, Indiana. She is working on her second novel, Family Legacies. As co-founder of FLOW , Bell collaborates with a group of African American female writers, bookstores, and organizations to offer literary programming in Chicago.

Tara Betts is the author of three poetry collections-Break the Habit, Arc & Hue, and the forthcoming Refuse to Disappear. She co-edited The Beiging of America: Personal Essays About Being Mixed Race in the 21st Century and edited a new critical edition of Adventures in Black and White, the long out-of-print memoir by Harlem-born, interracial child prodigy Philippa Duke Schuyler. She holds an MFA from New England College and a Ph.D. in English from Binghamton University. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Poetry, Essence, NYLON, Lit Hub. Dr. Betts currently works with students at ChiArts High School, Chicago State University, and participants in the Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project at Stateville Prison.

April Gary is a poet, essayist, and frequent collaborator with visual artists. Recent publications include interviews, essays, and poems, in Adroit Journal, Temporary Art Review, Hypertext Magazine, and at poetryfoundation.org. Their collaborative visual and written work has been shown at venues in and around Chicago, in Neuss, Germany, and Cairo, Egypt. They are currently the executive director of the Chicago Poetry Center, and was named one of Newcity’s “Lit 50: Who Really Books in Chicago.”

Janice Tuck Lively is a fiction writer and holds a PhD in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her fiction and creative non-fiction has appeared in the anthology The Thing About Love Is…, Hair Trigger, Obsidian III: Literature in the African Diaspora, Valley Voices: A Literary Review, among other publications. She lives in Chicago and teaches creative writing and literature at Elmhurst College. She is currently working on her first novel A Dress for Dorothy Dandridge.

Felicia Madlock writes across genres:  novels, poetry, short stories, and children’s tales. Her literary works have appeared in multiple entries of the “Journal of Ordinary Thoughts,” online publications, and written anthropologies. Her poem entitled “Where I’m From” was selected and published by Boston College in 2013 for their publication called “Writing Places.” Felicia Madlock strives to write stories and poems that will penetrate the heart of the reader. She works as a Mental Health Professional with incarcerated adults. She is a contributor to “They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing,” published by Black Lawrence Press in June 2018.

Nina Corwin — WMG Literary Events Curator.
Nina Corwin is a published poet, Founding Editor for Fifth Wednesday Journal and psychotherapist/advocate for victims of sexual assault. She is the author of two books of poetry, The Uncertainty of Maps and Conversations With Friendly Demons and Tainted Saints. Her work has appeared in ACM, Forklift OH, Hotel Amerika, New Ohio Review, Southern Poetry Review, Verse and has been nominated for the Pushcart prize. Corwin is an Advisory Editor for Fifth Wednesday Journal and co-edited Inhabiting the Body: A Collection of Poetry and Art By Women. She has read and performed her work across the country, at times set with musical or choreographic compositions.

Jennifer Steele – WMG Literary Events Outreach Coordinator.
Jennifer Steele is a published poet and educator and serves as Partnerships Coordinator for Teen Services at Chicago Public Library.  She served as co-founder and co-curator of the Revolving Door Reading Series. Her work has appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, Callaloo Journal, Columbia Poetry Review, Warpland Journal, So To Speak, and others, and is a Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop fellow. She has taught creative writing and digital media arts across Chicago since 2008 and has collaborated with numerous youth organizations and cultural institutions, designing innovative arts programming.

Kurt Heintz – WMG Literary Events Audio Recordist.
Kurt Heinz once taught computer graphics programming at Columbia College, and worked as an independent web developer. He’s since become the lead video director at Britannica. Heintz is known for his poetry videos, begun in the early 1990s. He also videoconferenced his colleagues’ poetry in the late 1990s — years before Skype and the iPhone. He was a technical advisor to the Electronic Literature Organization in its earliest years, and is the video content editor for Another Chicago Magazine.

Thank you Angela Narciso Torres, for your wonderful work and support for WMG and our Literary Program!