Helen Cusack O’Keeffe is a writer and social worker based in Paris for many foggy years. Publications can be found in the Bastille, Tightrope Press (Canada), Stoneskin Press (London), and Le Farming Times. Plays include Holey Tuscany, an absurdist maritime tragedy, Napoleon, Femme, Rhinocéros, a bilingual Surrealist extravaganza, and The Terrible Mystery of Ophelia Dupont-Cassé co-authored with poetic genius Vincent Chabany. She has been on the Paris Lit Up magazine editing team since issue #1. Her costume-maker alter ego, PomPom de la Tour Awfful, dresses actors and models for her own events and for ones hosted by her unfortunate victims.
Born in 1952 in Brockton, Massachusetts, Richard Krawiec became known in 1986 with Dandy ( Time Sharing in English), which was critically acclaimed. In 1996, he wrote a second novel, Faith in What? and has since devoted himself to poetry, theater, his columns in various East Coast magazines and teaching. His third novel Vulnérables, was published in France by Tusitala in 2017, and was a great critical success. Also in France, the rights to Dandy were purchased for the cinema. Paria , his third novel to be published in France, was released in January 2020. This was followed by Les Paralyses in 2022 and Croire en quoi ? in September 2024, which saw Richard invited back to France for a tour. Richard Krawiec is also an editor in the Jacar Press collective ( www.jacarpress.com ), a community active poetry publishing house that defends local social initiatives. He was one of the first to give writing classes and lead workshops in homeless shelters, prisons or deprived cities, guided by the concern, as in his novels, to give a voice to those who no longer have one. His own poetry has been published in dozens of journals internationally. He has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and elsewhere.– Live performance in English of Croire en Quoi? with bassist/percussionist Vattel Cherry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnkkTv-_1yA&t=2s Check out my bilingual(French and English) website! http://rkwriter.com/
Ali Sudani is a poet and activist based in Paris. He was born in Baghdad, Iraq, where he worked as a reporter, videographer, and humanitarian aid worker before arriving in France as a refugee in 2019. His work explores themes of war, exile, and migration, blurring the boundaries between personal and collective narratives. Ali started writing poetry in Arabic at the age of eleven. In 2009, he won the Ministry of Education’s Regional Award for Theatre, and in 2011, he received the Ministry’s Young Talent Prize for poetry. His work has been published in several magazines and newspapers in Iraq, and he currently writes in Arabic, English, and French. He holds a BA in Public Policy and a Master’s in International Relations and Middle-Eastern Studies. You can find him online on Instagram @sudani.0.
E.K. Bartlett is a Paris-based writer, editor, and translator. The recipient of the Gigantic Sequins Poetry Award of 2021 judged by Arisa White, and nominated for Best of the Net in fall 2022, their work has been published or is forthcoming in literary magazines both in print and online, including in Asymptote, Jet Fuel Review, Rust + Moth, Pulp Poets Press,Necessary Fiction, Fifth Wheel and Osmosis. They were previously the poetry editor for Paris Lit Up and now run a radio show on poetry in translation on World Radio Paris. You can follow them at Ell_TheRewriter.
Penny Allen, born in Portland, Oregon, discovered theater and created several shows in English and French before turning to cinema, where, still in Portland, she wrote, directed and produced two features, Property and Paydirt. She then lived in Central Oregon for nine years before moving to Paris, where she first worked on environmental issues and published two books, one on the environment, Metaphors for Change, the other a memoir, A Geography of Saints. She then returned to cinema with The Soldier’s Tale, Late for My Mother’s Funeral (in French and Arabic), and The Didier Connection. She has lived in France for thirty years and is working on a new movie.
Claudia Talbot is an Australian-born actress and writer, currently based in Paris, who has been steadily creating from a young age. Her debut poetry collection, City Gothic, was published September of 2023 by British indie publisher Dark Thirty Poetry Publishing, and was praised by Emily Perkovich, editor-in-chief of Querencia Press, as “a collection that is all teeth…possessed by a distinct polarity – a self-examination often mirroring a commentary on the outside world.” Her writing is heavily informed by gothic literature, and confessional poetry of the late 50s and early 1960s. She has performed on both sides of the equator, having debuted as a guest speaker at Wild Reading Spoken Word in Brisbane’s West End at the age of 17. While her work as an actress, which is steadily expanding to include both theatre and cinema, can be found under her birth name, her poetry can be found under the name ‘Giselle Linder’, a character onto which she chooses to project her most intimate dreams, deaths and desires.
Indran Amirthanayagam is a poet, editor, publisher, translator, youtube host and diplomat. For thirty years he worked for his adoptive country, the United States, on diplomatic assignments in Africa, Asia, Europe and North and South America. Amirthanayagam produced a “world record” in 2020 publishing three poetry collections written in three different languages. He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Haitian Creole. He has published twenty four poetry books, including Isleño (R.I.L. Editores), Blue Window (Ventana Azul) (trans. Jennifer Rathbun) (Diálogos Books), Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks.com), The Migrant States, Coconuts on Mars, The Elephants of Reckoning (winner 1994 Paterson Poetry Prize), Uncivil War and.The Splintered Face: Tsunami Poems. In music, he recorded Rankont Dout. He edits the Beltway Poetry Quarterly (www.beltwaypoetry.com); writes https://indranamirthanayagam.blogspot.com; writes a weekly poem for Haiti en Marche and El Acento; has received fellowships from the Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, The US/Mexico Fund for Culture and the Macdowell Colony. He is the IFLAC Word Poeta Mundial 2022. Amirthanayagam hosts The Poetry Channel https://youtube.com/user/indranam. New books include Powèt nan po la (Poet of the Port ) MadHat Press, 2023) and Origami:Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Diálogos Books, 2023).. Indran publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions (www.beltwayeditions.com). Kont Anlèvman is forthcoming from Edisyon Freda in Haiti. Amirthanayagam’s first collection in Portuguese Música subterranea will be published in 2024 by Editorial Kotter in Brazil. Seer is forthcoming in 2024 from Hanging Loose Press.
Kiwi talks too much (they/them) – a queer poet, philosopher, activist, depressivist from Amsterdam. Last year Kiwi travelled to perform poetry all over Europe: in dingy bars where people only spoke Spanish, joined a poetry slam in London and wrote poetic street art in the alleyways of Paris. Kiwi self-published a chapbook called ‘Waiting for the Hidden Track’ with drawings by their hand and even a CD with spoken word recordings. In 2024 they were allowed to join that year’s class of the Amsterdam Poetry Circle. All in all, writing poetry seems to be the one self-destructive coping mechanism they have fallen in love with and that’s here to stay. Kiwi’s work allows the listener to peek under the hood of their mental health, often explores relationships and politics. It can be hard hitting, emotional, a little cynical, but always honest and punk. Oh, and their book is for sale for a variable donation price, so if you like their act: come talk to them after the show. They take visa, mastercard, hugs and cash. @kiwitalkstoomuch.poetry kiwitalkstoomuch.wordpress.com
Born in the fog of San Francisco, Nicolette Daskalakis is a writer, filmmaker, and visual artist based in Paris. Her work blurs the boundaries between the literary, cinematic, and artistic—offering a multimedia landscape populated by paradox, pop-culture references, and dark humour. She is the author of “Portrait of Your Ex Assembling Furniture” (2018) and the forthcoming poetry collection “Tell Me I’m Not on Fire” (2025). Her writing has been anthologized by HarperCollins, nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and published in numerous literary journals. Nicolette received a Bachelors in Film & Television Production from the USC School of Cinematic Arts and a Masters in Fine Arts from the institut supérieur des art et du design de Toulouse. You can find her online at www.nicolettedaskalakis.com or on Instagram @hellonicolette and @nicolettepoetry
SpokenWord Paris 