Featured Performers
Rachel McKibbens
Headliner – Femme Fatale: Ladies of Poetry
Host – Indie Slam
Poet Rachel McKibbens is an ex-punk rock chola with five children. Known for her astonishingly visceral stage presence and devotion to craft, McKibbens has become one of the most respected poets in the spoken word community. She is the 2009 Women of the World poetry slam champion, is an eight-time National Poetry Slam team member, a three-time NPS finalist, and a 2007 New York Foundation for the Arts poetry fellow and Pushcart nominee. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including The Acentos Review, The November 3rd Club, Frigg Magazine, The Pedestal Magazine, Melusine, Wicked Alice, World Literature Today, Bowery Women: Poems, and So Luminous, the Wildflowers. She co-wrote the play-in-verse Eight Chamber Hunger Orchestra which premiered at the Bowery Poetry Club in Spring of 2007 to a capacity crowd. She was featured in the slam documentary, Slam Planet: War of the Words, and appeared twice on HBO’s Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry. She recently completed two full-length poetry manuscripts and is working on a collection of short stories. Her first book of poetry, Pink Elephant (Cypher Books) was released in December 2009.
More Femme Fatale featured poets:
Host – Natalie Patterson
Aziza Barnes
Vanessa Marco
Carolynn Brenan
Simply Kat
Judy Holiday
Beau Sia
Host for Semi Final Bout #1
Beau Sia is a Chinese-American poet from Oklahoma City. He has been featured in the award-winning film Slam and the documentary Slam Nation. As an author, Beau wrote the poetry book, “A Night Without Armor II: The Revenge.” A few of the anthologies his work appears in include, Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, Why Freedom Matters, and Spoken Word Revolution. Beau has two spoken word CD’s, “Attack! Attack! Go!” and “Dope and Wack.” He was a recipient of the California Arts Council Writer-in-Residence grant for Youth Speaks in 2001-2002, and was the lead artist for the Creative Work Fund. Beau has appeared on all seasons of HBO’s “Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry,” and has also performed on ESPN’s 2000 Winter X-Games, Showtime! at The Apollo, and the 2003 Tony Awards. He is one of the original cast members in Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, a 2003 Special Event Tony Award Winner, and has recently toured with Declare Yourself, a project dedicated to increasing the number of young voters in this past 2004 election. His one man show, “Fish Out of Water” won the 2004 Jury Prize for Best Alternative Show at the HBO Comedy Festival in Aspen, Colorado.
Mayda Del Valle
Host for Semi-final Bout #2
Mayda Del Valle has been described by the Chicago Sun Times as having “a way with words. Sometimes they seem to flutter and roll off her lips. Other times they burst forth like a comet streaking across a nighttime sky.” A proud native of the South Side of Chicago, she has appeared on 6 episodes of Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on HBO and was a contributing writer and original cast member of the Tony Award winning Def Poetry Jam on Broadway. She also toured with Norman Lear’s Declare Yourself Spoken Word Tour , a non-profit, non-partisan project created to encourage young voter registration for the 2004 presidential elections. She has appeared in Urban Latino, Latina Magazine, Mass Appeal, The Source, and The New York Times. Smithsonian Magazine chose her as one of “America’s Young Innovators in the Arts and Sciences” and Oprah’s O Magazine named her as one of 20 women for the first ever “O Power List.” In May of 2009 she was invited to perform at The White House for the President and First Lady.
Mahogany Browne
Co-Host of Finals and Feature Poet
The Cave Canem Fellow is the Editor of the women’s anthology His Rib: Stories, Poems & Essays by HER and author of several books including her latest book of poems: Swag. She has released five LPs including the live album Sheroshima. As co-founder of the Off Broadway poetry production, Jam On It, and co-producer of NYC’s 1st Performance Poetry Festival: SoundBites Poetry Festival, Mahogany bridges the gap between lyrical poets and literary emcee. Her freelance journalism can be found in magazines Uptown, KING, XXL, The Source, Canada’s The Word and UK’s MOBO. She facilitates performance poetry and writing workshops throughout the country, focusing on women empowerment and youth mentoring. She is the publisher of Penmanship Books, a small press for performance artists and owns PoetCD.Com, an on-line marketing and distribution company for poets. Mahogany is currently the slam host & curator of the Friday Night Slam Series at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe.
Jake Weisman
Host of Storytellers
Jake Weisman is a comedian in Los Angeles, CA. He has two podcasts, one called Cats and Pussy and another one called The Morning After…Podcast. He also has a sketch group called WOMEN. He loves cats and he thinks people are attractive.
Ron Babcock
Storytellers Featured Performer
Ron Babcock is a writer and performer in LA. He’s been on Last Comic Standing and was a winner at the Las Vegas Comedy Festival. He’s also acted on TV a few times. Not enough for you to be jealous, but enough to make people from his high school impressed. He writes daily at www.HeyRonBlog.com
Jenna Brister
Storytellers Featured Performer
Jenna was raised on the coffee-stained streets of Seattle, and is told by gypsies that she is a “textbook Aquarius.” After several years of living in NYC and being hit by cabs (twice) while riding her scooter, she moved to this sunny Los Angeles paradise, and shares a little bungalow in Santa Monica with her hot-orange goldfish, Edward Bloom. She is a Groundling, an Upright Citizen, and a two-time Moth Storyslam Champion. Visit Jenna at her website or on Facebook.
More Storytellers:
Brian Finkelstein
Bryan Safi
Tristan Silverman
Tristan Silverman on Twitter.
Quickly becoming one of the country’s foremost emerging performance poets, Tristan Silverman recently placed 7th overall in the nation at the 2010 Women of the World Poetry Slam. In the last two years she has toured as a visiting artist for colleges and organizations around the country. She is the 2010 and 2011 Chicago’s Women Slam Champion, a two-time Chicago Poetry Champion and has represented the city on two semi-finalist ranked National Poetry Slam teams. She is the recipient of numerous artists’ grants and awards, including the Chicago Community Trust Cultural Artist Grant and the 17th annual Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award in 2010. On a side note, she enjoys girls in boots, pugs of the snorty variety and a stiff glass of sake.
San Francisco-based Performance Poet Daphne Gottlieb stitches together the ivory tower and the gutter just using her tongue. She is the author and editor of nine books, most recently the poetry book 15 Ways to Stay Alive as well as co-editor (with Lisa Kester) of Dear Dawn: Aileen Wuornos in her Own Words.? She is the editor of Fucking Daphne: Mostly True Stories and Fictions and Homewrecker: An Adultery Reader, as well as the author of the poetry books Kissing Dead Girls, Final Girl, Why Things Burn and Pelt, and as the graphic novel Jokes and the Unconscious with artist Diane DiMassa.
Final Girl was the winner of the Audre Lorde Award in Poetry for 2003 from Publishing Triangle. Additionally, Final Girl was named one of the The Village Voice’s Favorite Books of 2003, and received rave reviews from Publisher’s Weekly, The San Francisco Chronicle and The Village Voice. Why Things Burn was the winner of a 2001 Firecracker Alternative Book Award (Special Recognition — Spoken Word) and was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for 2001. Her work has been translated into Turkish and Greek, and has inspired theatrical adaptations and DJ-remixes.
Recent press has praised her work as “fierce,” “unapologetic,” “scorching” and “deliriously gutsy.” She has been widely published in journals including The Utne Reader, Tikkun, nerve.com, mcsweeney’s.net, Exquisite Corpse and Instant City. Her work has appeared in a number of anthologies including Live Through This: The Art of Self-Destruction, Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders of the Spoken Word Revolution, Don’t Forget to Write!, Half Life: Jew-ish Tales from Interfaith Homes, With a Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn and Short Fuse: A Contemporary Anthology of Global Performance Poetry. She is also the cover girl on San Francisco Noir (Akashic Books, 2005).
Besides anchoring three national performance poetry tours, featuring with Maggie Estep, Hal Sirowitz and Lydia Lunch, Gottlieb has also appeared across the country with the Slam America bus tour and with notorious all-girl wordsters Sister Spit. She has performed at festivals coast-to-coast, including South by Southwest, Bumbershoot, and Ladyfest Bay Area.
Until 2006, she served as the poetry editor of the online queer literary magazine Lodestar Quarterly. She also was the poetry editor of Other Magazine and a co-organizer of ForWord Girls, the first spoken word festival for anyone who is, has been or will be a girl, which was held in September 2002.
Gottlieb teaches graduate-level creative writing, and has also performed and taught creative writing workshops at all levels around the country. She received her MFA from Mills College.
Guy J. Jackson is a writer, performer, and moviemaker. His weekly radio show ‘Jville’ streams at www.kpov.org. He’s recently moved to L.A. from England, where he was featured on BBC Radio, performed with the London Sinfonietta, and took stages at the Hay Literary, Edinburgh Fringe, and Latitude Festivals. He’s currently doing an all-original, late-night, one-man, not-for-kids storytelling show, ‘In The Ages Of The Earth’, on Saturdays in July at 11:30 PM, at Working Stage Theatre, 1516 N. Gardner, just north of Sunset, in West Hollywood.
Myspace
Blog
Press
In 2010, Jville, a weekly radio show hosted by myself and featuring spoken word and music, was launched on KPOV 106.7 FM Bend Community Radio and streams at www.kpov.org. A handful of ‘lost’ episodes can be heard at www.guyjjackson.podbean.com.
Also in 2010 Odd Frost, a collaboration with pianist David Finch and my fifth all-original storytelling album, was released via iTunes, Dig
Station, and CD Baby.
In 2009 my story track The Man Who Was Kind of an Ark was in the mix of the February 29th Colin Murray show on BBC Radio One, and on March 5th Mr. Murray spun my story track Thousands of Love Letters calling it ‘something from a lost Woody Allen movie’.
Also in 2009 I performed three one-man shows, Tintar Isle, In The Ages of the Earth, and The Drunken Nurses at the Cascade Theatrical Company’s Greenwood Playhouse, in Bend, Oregon. Tintar Isle, the only one to receive a review, was called ’captivating’ ’enchanting’ ’riveting’ ’mesmerizing’ and ’incomparable in its originality‘. Read the full review here: www.tsweekly.com/culture/theater/spend-an-enchanting-night-on-guy-j-jacksons-tintar-isle.html
In 2008, two of my children’s plays received publication: Hello & Goodbye Hansel & Gretel, from Playscripts, Inc., and Rumpelstiltskin Revisited, from Pioneer Drama Service. Also in 2008 I wrote and performed a one-man show, The Filthy Pilgrim, as part of the Camden Fringe Festival. My Surprise Cousin Catherine (one of the 200+ short and feature-length movies I’ve made and posted at http://www.youtube.com/Guyjjackson) was requested into competition in 2008 for the South By Southwest Film Festival. And the electronic artist Isnaj Dui and I created a duet spoken word/electronica album, Ingily Spikin Werld, through www.fboxrecords.co.uk.
Eight of the plays I’ve written were produced in Chicago, Illinois, including Products in the Last Refuge, as part of CollaborAction’s WinterSketchbook 2000, Diggers at a Burial, as part of the 1999 Bailiwick Director’s Fest, and Marrieds, as part of Side Studio’s The Balsa Heart (2003). Lifeline Theatre, named ‘the best children’s theatre in Chicago’ by New City and Chicago magazines, presented Another Puss in Boots and Rumpelstiltskin Revisited in 2001 and 2003. The Flight of the Butter Boy, The Cry Trilogii, and Pond 7 were all mounted by the itinerant Fantod Theatre Company. Also in Chicago I’ve done storytelling performances at The Green Mill, and as part of the Mary Arrchie Theatre’s Abby Hoffman Festival in both 2000 and 2001.
Elsewhere, in New York, New York, Love Creek Productions performed my one-act play Waste in their Winter One Acts Festival 2002, and in 2009 I told stories at the Bowery Poetry Club, the Cornelius Street Café, Kenny’s Castaways, and Under St. Mark’s Theatre. I wrote and performed a one-man storytelling show, The Tunnel, at Moorhead College in Fargo, North Dakota, in 2004, and Waste was performed there in 2005. Waste was also short-listed for the 2007 Heideman Award in the Actors’ Theatre of Louisville’s National Ten-Minute Play Contest.
The Brush Creek Playhouse, in Silverton, Oregon, performed The Flight of the Butter Boy in May 2005, and while majoring in History and Theatre at Southern Oregon University my plays Yarning, Deer, Consider This…, and The Flight of the Butter Boy were showcased as student productions. I also directed Yarning and Deer, as well as The Bay at Nice and Charlie the Chicken.
With Light Buoy Films and continuityerrorsprdctns I’ve been actor, writer, or director on over 200+ short and feature-length movies including The Death of Bert and Beth, Rebben, A Date Cascaded, End Day Agent & Cowboy, Me V Mur, Aurora, Troop, Brown Busker, Hall, The Not-True Bio of Noah Vale, New Molly Butterworth, The Eiffel Tower, Cla’m Go’, Harinkey, Rillabee’s Riddled Dusk, 77 Replies to 77 Questions, Pete Duggan Live at Home, Parlour Games The Movie, Levee Wait, The Canterbury Tales Part 2, The Dane John, Odin, My Surprise Cousin Catherine, 3 Slight Sisters of Stoke-Newington, Keep Up Wink, Notes on the Red Truck, Sandfella, Seaside Minette, Museum Minette, Little Bill Pilling, British Bits, The Kung-Fu Killer, Chocolate Face, This Is My Family, Battle Flat, Alfred’s Fountain, Catch On, Rest, A Note, and both Ribbon and Ribbon Redux, as well as the storytelling movies The Dishwasher, The Juno Rep, A Nice Time, The Tumbleweed and the Pirate, Fossdene, O Our Empty Dale, Farsifia, Cindy Lou, A Cabin With No Fireplace, Venetian, The Unknown Persons at the Door, and Crazy Old Sara.
I’ve also made music videos for Fiona Bevan, The Crisps, Pete Duggan, and David Goo, and three episodes of The Pete & Guy Show. Most of my video work is viewable at www.youtube.com/guyjjackson.
The Not-True Bio of Noah Vale was shown at Spyfest 2007. Because of My Surprise Cousin Catherine being requested by the 2008 SXSW Film Festival I was featured in Screen International magazine’s Talent Filter series (back cover, Issue 1619, November 9-15, 2007). End Day Agent & Cowboy was featured in the True Stories Film Night @ The Camden Eye and a collection of five of my short movies was shown at The Pictures Night @ Baden’s Boudoir. I also acted for Betaman Productions in the short films Gotta Have Hope and Nepenthe and for No Show Productions/Laas Vegas Films’ Blood on the Bathtiles.
Two of my all-original storytelling CDs (The Filthy Pilgrim and Live at Pete’s) have been published by Lazy Gramophone (www.lazygramophone.com) and are also available from CD Baby and iTunes. An EP, Notes On Cow Life, done in collaboration with BBC sound engineer Robin Warren a.k.a. Robin The Fog is also available from CD Baby and iTunes.
I penned a humor column for The Siskiyou newspaper in Ashland, Oregon, and my short stories have appeared in the literary magazines Hanson’s, Cascade Reader, The Throwback (a story which won a ‘best of’ issue prize), Confrontation, The Fix, Art Times, The Delinquent, in the Lazy Gramophone collection The Book of Apertures, online at Wood Coin and Platforms Magazine and www.wirelesstheatrecompany.co.uk, and on the compilation album disco_r.dance volume one, with other publications pending in Lovechild and Crash. My poems and short stories have been published in the Lazy Gramophone collections The Book of Apertures, Under the Influence, Surroundings, Make Love To Me, and Past Present Future. My illustrated short storybooks have been made available at Shoreditch’s bookartbookshop, and one storybook made it into an art exhibit in the Sunrunner Pub in Hitchin.
Living in San Francisco from 2004 to 2006 I incessantly performed my short stories in venues such as The Sweetwater, The Brainwash, No Name Bar, Bazaar Café, Dalva, Café International, The Green Tortoise, Peri’s, Rockin’ Java, 16th & Mission, Canvas Café, Ireland’s 32, and on The Diamond Dave Radio Show, until winding up with a ten-month stint as the storytelling co-host of both The Pete and Guy Show and The Purple Friday Show at the legendary Purple Onion. I also co-wrote and acted in two independent films which saw production, Ian and Gentle Lovers.
During my time in England I guested in a multitude of variety shows and music and poetry nights, including Art of News Show with London Sinfonietta, Freshly Scratched @ Battersea Arts Center, Orange/Myspace Unlit, London Unlit, Derek Meins’ Album Launch @ The Enterprise, Slow Club’s Residency @ The Enterprise, Yarns & Storytellers, Shortfuse!, Lazy Gramophone Presents…@ The Macbeth and @ The Luminiere as well as The Lazy Gramophone Festival @ The Miller, Scaledown, Express Excess, Gazing Into The Past Theatre Festival @ The Miller, Camden Crawl @ The Spread Eagle, The Delinquent Magazine Launch @ Whitechapel Art Gallery, The Fix Christmas Show, The Fix Poetry Live @ Rosemary Branch, Jam Sandwich @ The Premises, The Soapbox Club, Jont & Friends @ Soho Revue, The Human Zoo, Bugbear Promotions @ Hope & Anchor, Brixton’s Best Short Story Night, House Of Strange @ The HUB, Utter @ Arcola Theatre, Utter@ Salisbury Pub, The Cellar, Oxford Acid Jam, Wormworld, Littlest Birds, Bards In Their Eyes, Jorge, More Poetry, Little Legs Charity Event @ The Troubadour, Room of Abandon, The R U Sitting Comfortably StoryFest, An Evening With Luke Smith @ Orange Street Music Club, disco_r.dance, Donuts For Darwin, Zombies Are People Too, Poetry and Poppadums, Spoken Cabaret, Poetry Unplugged, West of Arkham, The Super-Best Friends Club @ Vibe Bar, The Luncheon League, Half-Past Barking, The Lovecraft Society Night, Sourfeast Theatre @ Dogstar Pub, The Takeaway Festival, Lazy Birds, The Stoke-Newington Festival, Why Not Take Five?, Pull Up A Chair @ The Victoria, 14 Hour, Touch Me I’m Sick, Farrago Festival of the Spoken Word, Farrago UK Slam, Farrago Love Slam, Daytime TV @ JAMM, A Spoonful of Poison @ Gramophone, A Spoonful of Poison @ The Rhythm Factory, King Gong, Muses Café, Pat and Trevor @ Sassoon Gallery and I was the caller at a Bingo/Karaoke/Poetry night.
Also in England I was on Resonance Radio’s The Late, Late Breakfast Show, The Sausage Show, and Space Soon, on Edinburgh Festival FM’s The Afternoon Show, and on a test pilot for the comic psychiatry show What‘s Your Problem? I captured the Poetry Champion 2006 award in the Farrago Summer Slam, was a finalist in Poetry Idol’s Edinburgh Special, was a finalist in Poetry Idol’s Brick Lane Festival Special, and placed third in the Masque Barbican Poetry Slam.
In 2006 and 2007 I joined the street performers in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Hay Literary Festival, and the Brighton Arts Festival, was a selected busker in 2008′s Big Chill Festival, and was onstage at the Poetry Arena in 2007‘s Latitude Festival and Pandora’s Playground for 2008′s Latitude Festival, and the Cabaret Tent in 2007‘s Shambala Festival.
Jacksonville, my half-hour radio show of stories and idle chatter, ran for two series on London’s Resonance Radio, in 2006 and 2007. And along with the UK’s only poet/magician, Nathan Penlington, I co-hosted Parlour Games, an hour-long radio show featuring special guests, spoken word, magic tricks, tomfoolery, and fake séances, again for two series on Resonance Radio.
I’ve also acted in over twenty plays in Chicago, Illinois and Ashland and Bend, Oregon, including The Zoo Story, Dust of the Road, The Duchess of Malfi, Six Characters in Search of an Author, How The Other Half Loves, Tom Jones, Ondine, Critic’s Choice, The Major, A Flea in Her Ear, Aria Da Capo, Our Country’s Good, A Christmas Carol, In Fireworks Lie Secret Codes, The Widow’s Blind Date, The Flight of the Butter Boy, Consider This…, and Pond 7 and in San Francisco I had roles in the feature films Revolution Summer and The Chupacabra and a commercial for Bay-To-Breakers.
