Anika Love’s irruptive love-and-sorrows are channeled into visual and literary art which expose the unseen. Anika liberates the self from barring constructions of normalcy through her subversion of “proper” formulas. The expressionistic nature of her work is the unleashed burst of the—formerly—repressed voice. Drawing inspiration from the self possessed beauty of Nikki Giovanni—“I cannot be comprehended except by my permission”—Anika’s work is a raw reclamation of the self. Her poems rebel against the confines of social expectation as they unapologetically echo the aches, rages, and wants of the other, the objectified, and the unheard. Anika is currently studying at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan where she is painstakingly creating against the grain!
Erin Byrne is the author of Wings: Gifts of Art, Life, and Travel in France, editor of Vignettes & Postcards from Paris and Vignettes & Postcards from Morocco, and writer of The Storykeeper film. Erin’s travel essays, poetry, fiction and screenplays have won awards including Grand Prize Solas Awards for Travel Story of the Year, the Foreword Indies Book of the Year, an Accolade Award for film, and the Pinnacle Achievement Award. She has taught writing at Shakespeare and Company Bookstore in Paris, at Book Passage Bookstore, and on Deep Travel trips, and is host of the LitWings event series at Book Passage and in Paris which features writers, photographers, and filmmakers. Erin is Collaborating Curator in Travel Writing and Photography for The Creative Process Exhibition, which was launched at the Sorbonne and travels to the world’s leading universities. She is on the board of advisors of LitCamp, a juried writers’ conference held annually at Esalen Institute, Big Sur. Her screenplay, Siesta, is in pre-production in Spain, and she is working on a novel set in the Paris Ritz during the occupation, Illuminations. 
Poet/collagist STEVE DALACHINSKY was born in Brooklyn in1946. His book “The Final Nite” (Ugly Duckling Presse – 2006) won the PEN Oakland National Book Award. His latest cds are “The Fallout of Dreams” with Dave Liebman and Richie Beirach (Roguart 2014), “ec(H)o-system” with the French art-rock group, the Snobs (Bambalam 2015) and “Pretty in the Morning with the Snobs” (Bisou Records – 2019). 
Tejan Karefa is a writer, photographer and media artist living and working in Paris since 2008, while making jumps from Washington D.C. He has captured street images in D.C., Paris, New York City, Bahia, Brazil and Southern Morocco. Some of these photos appeared in his debut photo exhibit entitled ‘Frontieres’. Tejan has traversed the Paris HIPHOP and Jazz performance scene as a guest vocalist with Paris-based artists and bands including David Linx, Ben L’Oncle Soul, Panam Panic, JDQ (Julien Daian Quintet) and the Urban Groove Unit. Tejan’s foreword opens the newly re-released ‘Little Man, Little Man’ by James Baldwin, originally published in 1977. He has participated on panel discussions and readings in New York and Paris to give voice to the “book of code” he cherished as a childhood gift from ‘Uncle Jimmy’.
Aisha Karefa-Smart is an author, educator and public speaker. Her childhood home in New York City was a congregation space for African-American writers, artists and musicians. Her uncle, the late James Baldwin, often returned home from the South of France to New York where he hosted all night “jam sessions” with literary greats such as Amiri Baraka, Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison. Influenced by her exposure to such artistic, and cultural, and political discourse, she chose to study and perform as a member of Dr. Glory Van Scott’s Children’s Theater, The Harlem Theater Company and The Falcons Dance Troupe in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Aisha has presented and facilitated panel discussions examining the work of her late uncle and his re-emergence into the nation’s political and racial discourse.
Bonafide Rojas is the author of four collections of poetry: Notes On The Return To The Island (2017), Renovatio (2014), When The City Sleeps (2012) & Pelo Bueno (2004). He’s appeared on Def Poetry Jam & has been published in numerous anthologies & journals. He’s in the band The Mona Passage & has performed at: Lincoln Center, The Brooklyn Museum, El Museo Del Barrio, Bowery Ballroom, The Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, Rotterdam Arts Center, The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Latinale Berlin, Festival Kerouac Vigo & Festival De La Palabra. He currently lives in New York City.
Chris Ames has lived in France for 27 years, but the past 10 have been a second youth due to divorce, homelessness, and travel to the four corners of the earth. He has published six books of short stories and poetry, in Japan, Poland and France, and in 2017 won a nonfiction prize in America for “An American (homeless) in Paris,” which is available online. This month will see publication of a bilingual book of prose-poetry entitled “Exile: The Pleasure is Ours” concerning his travels in Russia, and on May 7th will be the guest author at the American Library in Paris, to talk about his book on homelessness and its unforeseen benefits. Please welcome Chris back to Paris. He is arriving April 1st from winter in Myanmar.
Robert Isaf is an award-winning poet and journalist from Atlanta. He has performed across Europe and the United States, and has recently relocated to East Germany, where he is working with the medieval Aramaic poetry of Gregory Barhebraeus and on a collection of essays concerning identity and memory off the beaten path. This is his first time performing in Paris.
Dylan Harris, 
Rufo Quintavalle was born in London in 1978, studied at Oxford and the University of Iowa and has lived in Paris for the last fifteen years. He is the author of eight books of poetry, the most recent of which, hhereenow, is published by corrupt press in Luxembourg. A new and selected poems will be published by Ravenna Press in Washington State later this year. He has taught creative writing at NYU Paris and for many years ran the reading series, Poets Live. He is also an environmentalist and is involved in a large scale reforestation project in the Brazilian Amazon. Poems are on 
Jamika Ajalon is a prolific author and inter-disciplinary artist who works with different mediums independently, but also in multiple fusions- incorporating written and spoken text, sound/music, and visuals. Her poems, stories and essays have been published in various digital and hard copy publications internationally. She currently writes a regular column for Itchy Silk magazine “queer plume: the fugitive diaries”, guest lecturer , (including Vienna Arts Academy, and American University of Paris), vocalist, writer musician, (Zenzile/Jamika & the Argonauts). She has performed her audio visual anti lectures / sonic slam and exhibited across the globe (including Rennes Biennale of contemporary art,(2018), DISTURBANCE expo Kunsthalle Leipzig,(2017), Beton Salon, Paris (2017). She has a BA Film/Video, MA Communications in Culture and Society, Goldsmiths University, London.
SpokenWord Paris 