Festival Director and Poetry Co-curator David A. Kirschenbaum is the author of The July Project 2007 (Open 24 Hours), a series of songs about Star Wars set to rock and pop classics. His work has appeared in Brooklyn Rail, the Brooklyn Review Online, Chain, and The Village Voice, among others. He is the editor and publisher of Boog City, a New York City-based small press and electronic newspaper now in its 30th year. He is the director of the Welcome to Boog City Arts Festivals, now in its 15th year. His Gilmore girls tinged poems form the lyrics of Preston Spurlock and Casey Holford’s band Gilmore boys (www.myspace.com/gilmoreboysmusic). http://boogcity.com
Music Curator Todd Carlstrom is a singer-songwriter, playwright, actor, teaching artist, and professional dungeon master of tabletop roleplaying. His album Gold on the Map is available in all the usual digital venues, music from which won Best at the 2015 NYC Web Fest. He has curated and performed in many Boog shows and Classic Albums Live. He isn’t enamored of social media, but you can follow his sporadic postings at www.facebook.com/toddcarlstromandtheclamour.
Poets Theater Curator Bill Considine writes poems and plays. His books include The Furies and Strange Coherence (both from The Operating System) and The Other Myrtle (Finishing Line Press). His full-length plays performed in 2019 were Moral Support, at Medicine Show Theatre, and Women’s Mysteries, at Polaris North. His short verse plays seen in 2020-21 include Aunt Peg and the Comptometer at Bowery Poetry Club, Persephone’s Return, Odyssey’s End, and A Common Tongue, on Zoom from Polaris North, and John Milton in the Tower, on Zoom from the Boog City 30th Anniversary program. www.williamconsidine.com/
Call it Democracy is Film Curator Matt Kohn‘s film about the injustice of voting within the system of the Electoral College. His second feature documentary, currently in progress, is about NBA star and activist Manute Bol working to create a system of education that would benefit everyone in Sudan. Kohn produced Charlie Victor Romeo, and created the film screening series, Speakeasy Cinema. He is currently developing his screenplays to become feature films. www.mattkohn.net/
Poetry Co-curator Ron Kolm is a contributing editor of Sensitive Skin magazine. Ron is the author of Divine Comedy, Duke & Jill, Suburban Ambush, Night Shift, A Change in the Weather, Welcome to the Barbecue, and Swimming in the Shallow End. He’s had work in Abwarts, And Then, Feuerstuhl, Great Weather for Media, the Resist Much / Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance anthology, Maintenant, Live Mag!, Local Knowledge, NYSAI, The Opiate, The Poets of Queens anthology, The Riverside Poets Anthology, Stadtgelichter, Var Ucca Muhely #63, The Brownstone Poets anthologies, and The Red Wheelbarrow. Ron’s papers were purchased by the New York University library.
Poetry Co-curator Suzanne Mercury‘s publications include: sassafracas (Xerolage 69), a collection of photographs of her visual and haptic poetry (Xexoxial Editions) and Hand to Earth (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs). Her new chapbook Earthlight is forthcoming from Propolis Press. She lives in Boston where she co-curates The Boston Poetry Marathon. www.suzannemercury.cloud/
Poetry Co-curator John Mulrooney is a poet, filmmaker, and musician living in Cambridge, Mass. He is author of If You See Something, Say Something from the Anchorite Press and co-producer of the documentary The Peacemaker, from Central Square Films. He serves as poetry editor for Boog City. He records and performs regularly with a number of musical groups in the greater Boston area. He is an associate professor in the English Department at Bridgewater State University. His work has appeared in Fulcrum, Pressed Wafer fold ’em zine, Solstice, the Battersea Review, Poetry Northeast, Spoke, Let the Bucket Down, and others. canwehaveourballback.org/f/john-mulrooney
Fiction Curator Wanda Phipps is a writer/ translator/editor living in NYC. Her books include Field of Wanting: Poems of Desire and Wake-Up Calls: 66 Morning Poems. Her poetry has been translated into Ukrainian, Hungarian, Arabic, Galician, and Bangla. She’s received awards from The New York Foundation for the Arts, The National Theater Translation Fund, and others. As a founding member of Yara Arts Group she has collaborated on numerous theatrical productions presented in Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Siberia, and at La MaMa, E.T.C. in NYC. She’s curated reading series at The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church and written about the arts for Time Out New York, Paper Magazine, and About.com. She is the fiction curator and editor for Boog City. Her new book Mind Honey has just been published by Autonomedia. mindhoney.com
Poetry Co-curator Talena Lachelle Queen is the first poet laureate of the great city of Paterson, N.J., where she created the Paterson Poetry Festival, the city’s first ever poetry festival, now in its fourth year. She is the chair of the city’s Cultural Arts Commission (PAX).She is an inductee to the University of Washington Hall of Excellence. Queen is also the founder/president of Her Best Self, a program of the National Black United Fund that fosters leadership qualities in young women.
She is the president of nonprofit Word Seed, which offers itself as a voice and a service for anyone that writes. The Paterson native earned her M.F.A. in creative writing & poetics from the University of Washington Bothell, where she authored Fourteen. She is passionate about history, African-American culture and social justice issues. She is often inspired by current events and is known to infuse music into her highly emotive poetry. Queen is a columnist for Tapinto Paterson where she curates a space for critical conversations that offer perspectives which both deepen and elevate.
She is a certified and licensed K-12 teacher specializing in Middle Level Humanities in New Jersey and Washington states. talenalachellequeen.com
Poetry Co-curator Dimitri Reyes is a Boricua multidisciplinary artist, content creator, organizer, and educator from Newark, N.J. He has organized poetry events such as #PoetsforPuertoRico and has read at The Dodge Poetry Festival, Split This Rock, and The American Poetry Museum. His forthcoming book, Every First and Fifteenth, won the Digging Press 2020 Chapbook Award. Some of his work is published in Vinyl, Kweli, Entropy, Cosmonauts, Obsidian, and Acentos. He is the marketing and communications director at CavanKerry Press and an Artist-in-Residence with NJPAC. www.dimitrireyespoet.com/