Bonafide Rojas is a poet & musician. The author of five collections of poetry: Excelsior, Notes On The Return To The Island, Renovatio, When The City Sleeps & Pelo Bueno. An established Nuyorican Poet, he’s appeared on Def Poetry Jam & has been published in numerous anthologies & journals. He was awarded the 2023 Letras Boricuas Fellowship from The Mellon Foundation & is the bandleader/songwriter The Mona Passage who have released two albums: The New Myths & When The City Sleeps. He’s performed at Lincoln Center, The Brooklyn Museum, El Museo Del Barrio, Bowery Ballroom, Philadelphia Museum Of Art, Rotterdam Arts Center, Konvent Zero Barcelona, Spoken Word Paris, Latinale Berlin, Hafen Lesung Hamburg, & Festival De La Palabra Puerto Rico. He’s an avid collector of pop culture & only wears red socks.
Emmet O’Brien is not your generic poet, bursting into the scene in March 2017, Emmet has done more than your average 25 year old. Within the first 3 years alone he released a book, entitled “A Perspective From The Corrupt Mind Of The Youth” and he was the first poet to be published in “District” magazines newsletter, aswell as various videos reaching tens of thousands of views. O’Brien, best known for his video “the North side” is also an event organiser, starting his poetry and music event “Vybrations” in June 2017. it saw incredible success, with amazing artists such as Colm Keegan and Hazel Hogan prefoming at it. The poet extraordinaire then moved on to run a second regular night, called “Phat Cones” which showcased Ireland’s best poets and rappers while educating people on the benefits and positives of medicinal cannabis. In 2018, he opened up for Shane Koyczan. The wordsmith released his second book, entitled “Yup Ouveh” in May 2018, where copies were sold in both Ireland and the UK, aswell as copies being sold in Nigeria. O’Briens third book, entitled “The Illusion Of Perception ” released in March 2019. A play adaptation of the book was launched in March 19, and the event sold out in less than 12 hours. O’Brien has had many festival shows, playing Electric Picinc, Knockanstockan, Body & Soul, and All Together Now. In 2022, O’Brien had his latest poem “Story bud?” muralised onto the walls of temple bar in Dublin city centre. Most recently, O’Brien has played 2 shows in the Gate Theatre, supporting BAC’s beat boxing adaptation of Frankenstein, and in December 2022, he returned from his first European tour, visiting Germany, England, and Paris. 2023 saw the poet teach in prisons around Ireland with a project called “Storytime” and the project was toured around Ireland to show inmates they can be creative.
Carrie Chappell is the author of Loving Tallulah Bankhead (Paris Heretics 2022) and Quarantine Daybook (Bottlecap Press 2021). Some of her recent poems have been published in Birdcoat Quarterly,Iron Horse Literary Review, Nashville Review, Redivider, and SWIMM, and her essays have previously appeared in DIAGRAM, Fanzine, New Delta Review, The Iowa Review, The Rumpus, The Rupture, and Xavier Review. She holds an MFA from the University of New Orleans’ Creative Writing Workshop and, presently, teaches English as a Foreign Language at Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (CNAM). Each spring, she curates Verse of April, of which she is the founder, and one of her newest ventures is writing Spiritual Material: Musings from My Second-Hand, Parisian Wardrobe, which she hosts via Substack. As a current doctoral student in French Literature at CY Cergy Paris University, Carrie is working on a research-creation project around the poetic novels of Hélène Bessette.
Born in Nebraska, USA, Tim Holm (“est un voyageur européen de la culture …” ) is a poet: The Quiet Sun / Le Soleil Calme, trans. by Claude Held, selected poems published by Carcanet Press-UK, in the collection, Poetry of Europe)…, La Traductière-France, ( L.M. Barros, ed. 2023), Caesurae-India (Cécile Oumhani, guest ed. 2022), Poetry International Rotterdam, (Martin Mooij, ed.) Anthology UNICEF-Rencontres Européennes – Europoésie-France (Joël Conte-Taillasson, ed. 2023) He is a translator, (The Secret of Sarah Tombelaine, D. Lacambre, Apple Foundation’s best screenplay award/Festival Avoriaz, Rapures by JJ Celly, published by Ed. Jacques Bremond ) …a lyricist, (Songs and Nursery Rhymes of the USA, HELLO USA, Auvidis-Harmonia Mundi) …, a dialog writer/actor’s dialog coach ( F. McDormand, Mark Hamill, V. Gassmann …) on feature film and TV (1001 Nights, dir. Ph de Broca, and The Favour, the Watch and the Very Big Fish, dir. B. Lewin …).He holds an MACW (Master of Arts in Creative Writing from Antioch International), London and Oxford, UK and Sligo-Ireland, on an Antioch International Literary Fellowship and WB Yeats Society Scholarship award. His DEA in modern literature (Women Characters in the Verse Plays of WB Yeats) is from the Sorbonne, Paris IV. Holm was founding Associate Editor (M. Lynch, ed.) of the Paris/Atlantic International Review of Poetry created in 1982 and published by the American College, now University, in Paris, and, Representative in France for the IWP (International Writing Program) of the University of Iowa, Iowa City, under the direction of founders, Paul and Hualing Nieh Engle. He organized the first American Evening of Poetry in 1988 ever held at the Maison de la Poesie, Paris, presenting American poets, Paul Engle, Rita Dove and CK Williams, with translations into French by poets Michel Deguy, Jacques Darras … and has read at many public venues with Vasco POPA, L. FERLINGHETTI, A. VOZNESSENSKI, René TAVERNIER, past President of P.E.N. Club International
SOPHIA LUCIA is an experimental artist from Chicago. She writes/produces/stars in her one-woman variety show, ‘Freak Show Cabaret,’ which includes (but is not limited to,) her original musical compositions, poetry, performance art, clown, absurdist theatre, burlesque, and improvisation. She is also currently one of the hosts of Spoken Word Paris (have you heard of it?) She has been published in various print & digital magazines, such as Backcombed Magazine, Orange Peel Magazine, The Space In Between Gallery, Juste Millieu, and Cream Scene Carnival Magazine, to name a few. Sophia’s ‘Freak Show Cabaret’ is performed internationally (the next presentation will be at CAVERN CLUB in Paris on February 22) and her music can be found on all streaming platforms. Her next album, ‘?‘ is scheduled to be released in May 2024. Hoot hoot.
Sue Burge is a freelance creative writing tutor, mentor and editor based in North Norfolk, UK. Sue’s poems have been published in a wide range of journals and have also featured in themed anthologies on science fiction, modern Gothic, illness, Britishness, endangered birds, WWI and the ongoing pandemic. In 2016 she received an Arts Council grant which enabled her to write a body of poetry in response to the cinematic and literary legacy of Paris which resulted in her first collection, Lumière. She has two collections out with Live Canon, In the Kingdom of Shadows and Confetti Dancers. The latter features a sequence of poems in homage to the loss of a dancer friend to the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s. The Saltwater Diaries (Hedgehog Poetry Press) was published in 2020 and examines Sue’s ongoing relationship with the sea. Her next full collection, The Artificial Parisienne, explores the world of the alter ego she left behind in Paris three decades ago and her long, edgy relationship with the city. It is due out in January 2024 and she is hoping to have it in her hand on 22nd January! www.sueburge.uk
Youssef Alaoui-Fdili is an Arab-Latino, born in California. His mother is Colombiana. His father was Moroccan. The Alaoui-Fdilis are originally from Fez. His brothers and aunts and uncles and cousins are today mostly in Casablanca and Rabat. His family and heritage are an endless source of inspiration for his varied, dark, spiritual and carnal writings. He has an MFA in Poetics from New College of California. There, he studied Classical Arabic, Spanish Baroque and Contemporary Moroccan poetry. He is also well versed in the most dour and macabre literature of the 19th Century. His poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, 580 Split, Cherry Bleeds, Virgogray Press, Red Fez, Big Bridge, Dusie Press, Paris Lit Up, The Opiate, and nominated for a Pushcart at Full of Crow. Youssef is an original creator of the East Bay literary arts festival “Beast Crawl.” In 2012 he created Paper Press Books & Associates Publishing Company. This press offers several important books of poetry and one poetry and art compendium.
George Wallace (MPH, MFA) is a NYC based poet and spoken word artist with 42 chapbooks, five albums of spoken word poetry streamed worldwide, and an active schedule of appearances in NYC and worldwide, including an appearance in 2023 at the St Augustine Poetry Festival and recent or scheduled appearances at the Medellin Poetry Festival, National Beat Poetry Festival, Lowell Celebrates Kerouac, Turrialba Poetry Festival, Boao Poetry Festival, Silk Road International Poetry Festival, Piacenza Biennale, Human Underground, Athens. In France he has previously performed at Shakespeare and Company, and participated in a Camille Claudel workshop at the Avignon Theater Festival. As writer in residence at the Walt Whitman Birthplace, he is creator of POETS BUILDING BRIDGES, now in its third season, triangulating groups of poets from different regions of the world.
Yann Rousselot is a translator, writer, and poet. He grew up in airport lounges and diplomatic enclaves in the company of his brothers, his sister, and countless cheap suitcases, raised across the globe by humanitarian parents. Graduate of the Sorbonne (Language & Literature) and the University of London Institute in Paris (Translation), he is a regular spoken word performer at Au Chat Noir, Culture Rapide, and le Bordel de la Poésie. His work has been featured in Paris Lit Up Magazine, The Bastille magazine, AUP’s Paris/Atlantic Magazine, Thought Catalog, Canopic Jar, Gard Poetry Journal (Turkish), and the Belleville Park Pages. His first collection of poetry, Dawn of the Algorithm, was published by Inkshares in 2015.
SpokenWord Paris 