Monalisa Malone
MONALISA MAIONE is a two-time Pushcart nominated feminist poet living between California and Paris, France. Her poems often tackle the nature of power and control of institutions, both political and sociological on individuals and the natural world. She tends to explore a precise idea using clean imagery and sharp language to expose a side of common life that is often taken for granted. Her poems, interviews and voice are found in 30 Years of the SLO Poetry Festival, Miller Street Memories, The Long Islander, I Let Go of the Stars in My Hand, Cultural Weekly L.A., The Fem, The Rogue Voice, South Florida Poetry Journal, and others. She is an accomplished reader, having appeared in major venues and festivals in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, San Luis Obispo, Paris and recently, at the prestigious Tanta International Poetry Festival in Egypt where her poems were beautifully translated into Arabic. Monalisa lives with a brain injury, which informs her life and work in difficult, beautiful and mysterious ways. Poetry is her constant companion.
Kristina Vaughan is a Parisian songwriter. She learnt classical piano in French conservatoires, honed the craft of singing and songwriting with coach Jessica Saraf (Sanseverino, Calogero) and started giving concerts in 2013, first as a soloist, then in duo and trio setups. Her music is a blend of Anglo-Saxon and European sounds, as she draws inspiration both from her Czech and Italian origins and from important figures of English songwriting (Sinead O’Connor, Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, Alanis Morissette, Jeff Buckley, Damien Rice…). In impressionistic tunes reminiscent of broken cliffs, running water and angry skies, the pianist-singer spins yarns about love, hope and engagement with the world, accompanied by cellist-backup singer Marie Potosniak and, successively, drummer Guillaume Valette, beatboxer Skysoul, and drummer Raphaël Meyrier.
Raluca Petrescu was born in 1990 in Iași, Romania. She integrated the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Paris in 2012, and finished a MA in Comparative Literature at the Sorbonne, working on Shakespeare, Fernando Pessoa, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. She writes in and translates to and from romanian, french and english. She published poems in The Bastille and the Belleville Park Pages, and literary criticism Rimbaud vivant.
SpokenWord Paris 