Jackson Heights Poetry Festival

Participating Poets: Jackson Heights Poetry Festival 2008

Ishle Yi Park is a Korean American poet, singer, and the first woman to be named the Poet Laureate of Queens, New York. Her first book, The Temperature of This Water, is the winner of three prestigious awards, and her poetry has been published widely in literary magazines and journals. She appears regularly on television and performs poetry and music in venues across the world.

Patrick Rosal, MFA is an award-winning poet and educator. He has published two books of poetry, Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive, which won the Asian American Writers; Workshop Members; Choice Award, and most recently My American Kundiman, and his work has been featured in numerous anthologies and journals. His work has been honored by the annual Allen Ginsberg Awards, the James Hearst Poetry Prize, the Arts and Letters Prize, and Best of the Net, among others. He has taught writing and poetry at Bloomfield College, Penn State Altoona, Centre College and, currently, the University of Texas, Austin.

Bill Zavatsky grew up in Connecticut and has lived in Manhattan since 1965. He holds B.A. and M.F.A. degrees from Columbia University and received Guggenheim Fellowship to write poetry in 2008-2009. He has published two books of poems, most recently Where X Marks the Spot (Hanging Loose Press); two co-translations, The Poems of A.O. Barnabooth by Valery Larbaud (to be republished in 2008 by Black Widow Press) and Earthlight: Poems by Andre Breton, which won the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Translation Prize; a creative writing resource book; and has been anthologized most recently in The Face of Poetry (Univ. of California Press). He has received grants in poetry from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Last summer he was a fellow at the MacDowell Colony. He teaches English and film courses in the high school at the Trinity School in Manhattan.

Trinidadian-born Samantha Thornhill started writing poetry at age eleven. She earned her B.A. in Creative Writing from Florida State University, and later graduated from the University of Virginia with her MFA in Poetry. Aside from coaching the Virginia Slam team for two years, Samantha was and still is an eternal member of Black on Black Rhyme and Cave Canem, two organizations keen on promoting poetry in general, Black poetry in particular. For several years, Samantha served as a program director at the Children's Aid Society in East Harlem, where she built and nurtured youth development programs. Samantha currently teaches poetry to first year acting students in the Drama division at the Julliard School. She is the author of the young adult novel Seventeen Seasons, which is forthcoming from Penguin books.

Richard Marotta, PhD received his B.A. from Fordham and PhD from CUNY Graduate Center. Marotta has given readings in Backfence, taught poetry and has been a Headmaster for 21 years. Currently the headmaster at Garden School, Marotta also teaches AP English and AP French Literature as well as undergrad and graduate courses at Queens College. He specializes in courses on Milton and the Romantics.

Lee Schlesinger, PhD is Associate Professor of Literature at SUNY Purchase College. He is an authority on 19^th and 20^th century American poetry and is also a published poet and novelist. In addition to his efforts at Purchase College, he teaches and lectures in many venues, including high schools, libraries, churches and synagogues.

Michael Dumanis, MFA, PhD, is a poet and Assistant Professor of English at Cleveland State University. His poems have appeared in a number of national literary journals and he is the recent recipient of The University of Massachusetts Press; 2006 Juniper Prize for Poetry. His collection, entitled My Soviet Union, was published in 2007.

Jai Chakrabarti is a writer of poetry, fiction and algorithms. Born in Kolkata, India, his work has appeared in Barrow Street, Hayden's Ferry Review, Parse:Alchemy, Rattapallax, Spindle (Online), Symposium, as well as, from India, The Statesman and Festival. Jai has been featured at readings in SUNY Buffalo, the Indian Institute for Advanced Study, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, the Bowery Poetry Club, Bar 13, and many other poetry and performance venues in the tri-state area. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.