A poetry slam is a competitive art event in which poets perform spoken word poetry before a live audience and a panel of judges. While formats can vary, slams are often loud and lively, with audience participation, cheering and dramatic delivery.
Julia Alvarez is an American New Formalist poet, novelist, and essayist. She rose to prominence with the novels How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (1991), In the Time of the Butterflies (1994), and Yo! (1997). Her publications as a poet include Homecoming (1984) and The Woman I Kept to Myself (2004), and as an essayist the autobiographical compilation Something to Declare (1998). She has achieved critical and commercial success on an international scale and many literary critics regard her to be one of the most significant contemporary Latina writers.
Jamie DeWolf is an American slam poet, film director, writer, spoken word artist, and circus ringmaster from Oakland, California.
Latino poetry is a branch of American poetry written by poets born or living in the United States who are of Latin American origin or descent and whose roots are tied to the Americas and their languages, cultures, and geography.
The Nuyorican Poets Cafe is a nonprofit organization in the Alphabet City neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It is a bastion of the Nuyorican art movement, and has become a forum for poetry, music, hip hop, video, visual arts, comedy, and theater. Several events during the PEN World Voices festival are hosted at the cafe.
Staceyann Chin is a spoken-word poet, performing artist and LGBT rights political activist. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Pittsburgh Daily, and has been featured on 60 Minutes. She was also featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, where she shared her struggles growing up as a gay person in Jamaica. Chin's first full-length poetry collection was published in 2019.
Suzi Q. Smith is an American an award-winning artist, activist, and educator who lives in Denver, Colorado.
Richard Blanco is an American poet, public speaker, author, playwright, and civil engineer. He is the fifth poet to read at a United States presidential inauguration, having read the poem "One Today" for Barack Obama's second inauguration. He is the first immigrant, the first Latino, the first openly gay person and at the time the youngest person to be the U.S. inaugural poet. In 2023, Blanco was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Biden from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Eseohe Arhebamen or Eseohe Arhebamen-Yamasaki, also known as Edoheart, is a poet, dancer, singer, musician, producer, performance artist and visual artist. Eseohe was born in Zaria, Nigeria and is descended from a royal family of the Benin Empire. Eseohe Arhebamen's maternal grandmother is Princess Theresa Maria Nodumwenben Osazuwa, a princess of the Edo people. Eseohe Arhebamen's great-grandfather Osazuwa Eredia, the father of Princess Theresa Osazuwa, was the Oba N’Ugu and Enogie of Umoghumwun, making Eseohe Arhebamen a royal descendant and princess. "The foundation of the kingdom of Ugu, with its capital at Umoghumwun has been traced to Prince Idu, the eldest son of Oba Eweka I."
Yo-Yo Boing! (1998) is a postmodern novel in English, Spanish, and Spanglish by Puerto Rican author Giannina Braschi. The cross-genre work is a structural hybrid of poetry, political philosophy, musical, manifesto, treatise, memoir, and drama. The work addresses tensions between Anglo-American and Hispanic-American cultures in the United States.
The College Union Poetry Slam Invitational (CUPSI) is an annual Poetry Slam tournament put on by the Association of College Unions International (ACUI) in which teams of four or five college students from different colleges and universities compete against each other. Its location changes every year.
Sister Outsider is a poetry duo that specializes in slam poetry or spoken word. Dominique Christina and Denice Frohman are both Women of the World Poetry Slam Champions. Their collaboration has brought them success over the last two years as they have been to over 90 universities, colleges, conferences, and many other spaces across the United States. Inspired by the life of Audre Lorde, their premise is to encourage students and people across all generations to understand the power of art. They believe art can be a form of activism and expression that goes well beyond the page. Aside from their vivid performances, Sister Outsider also offers workshops to help students with their poetry writing as well as the delivery aspect to slam poetry.
CantoMundo is an American literary organization founded in 2009 to support Latino poets and poetry. It hosts an annual poetry workshop dedicated to the creation, documentation, and critical analysis of Latinx poetry.
Kristiana Rae Colón is an American poet, playwright, actor, educator, Cave Canem Fellow, creator of #BlackSexMatters and co-founder of the #LetUsBreathe Collective. She was awarded 2017 Best Black Playwright by The Black Mall. Her plays have premiered in Chicago, New York, London, and other cities. Colón is the author of several plays and poems. She earned the 2013 Drinking Gourd Poetry Prize. Her play, Octagon, won Colón the Arizona Theatre Company 2014 National Latino Playwriting Award. Kristiana's writing, producing, and organizing work to radically reimagine power structures, our complicity in them, and visions for liberation.
Button Poetry is a Minneapolis-based poetry company and independent publisher of performance poetry. They are known for their viral videos of slam poetry performances, including a performance of "OCD" by Neil Hilborn that the Knight Foundation called "the most-viewed slam performance in history."
Elliot Darrow is an American spoken word poet.
Desireé Dallagiacomo is an American spoken word poet and teaching artist. She is of European and Choctaw descent, and she is an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Her first book of poetry, SINK, was published by Button Poetry in March 2019. Before publishing her first full-length collection, her poems amassed millions of views on Youtube. Her poems, "Thighs Say" “Real Sex Tips.” and “Shave Me” among others were first published by Button Poetry. She is a Pushcart Prize Nominee.
Elizabeth Acevedo is an American poet and author. In September 2022, the Poetry Foundation named her the year's Young People's Poet Laureate.
Leyla Josephine is a poet, screenwriter, performer and educator from Glasgow, Scotland, currently living South Ayrshire. She has won a number of awards for her poetry and her spoken word show Hopeless received critical praise. In 2019, Leyla launched a new show, Daddy Drag.
Terisa Tinei Siagatonu is a Samoan spoken word poet, arts educator, and community organizer. In 2012, she was awarded a Champion of Change Award for her activism.
