//Young Chicago Authors Teaching Artists Roster 2006-2007//

Felicia Rose Chavez is a creative non-fiction writer, book artist and social activist. Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Felicia moved to Chicago in 2001 to serve with AmeriCorps. She holds a B.A. in English and Community Service Studies from DePaul University where she was awarded multiple research grants in non-fiction and creative non-fiction writing. As an educator, Felicia has taught creative writing and reading comprehension at the elementary, middle and high school levels. She dedicates her life to deconstructing the traditional dimensions of power and creating new approaches to learning. Currently, Felicia serves as YCA's Workshops Manager and GirlSpeak Webzine's Chief Editor.

Kevin Coval has performed on four continents in seven countries at universities, high schools, and conferences, including; The Parliament of the World's Religions in Capetown, South Africa, African Hip-Hop Festival: Battle Cry, Poetry Society of London, Yale, Stanford, St. Xavier's in Bombay, India and three seasons of Russell Simmons's HBO Def Poetry Jam. A member of the 2002 and 2003 National Poetry Slam Team-Chicago, Coval's writing has appeared in The Spoken Word Revolution   (Source Books), Awakening The Spirit (Skylight Paths), XCP: Cross-Cultural Poetics, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reporter, Fly Paper and can be heard regularly on WBEZ's 848 on Chicago Public Radio.            

Kevin is a poet and performance artist whose work looks critically at current cultural and political events via the lens of his Jewish identity. He uses hip-hop to wrestle, expose, and explore the impact of whiteness on himself and people of color. He has been privileged to share a stage with Cornel West, Ntozake Shange, Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Studs Terkel and Ani Difranco. Co-founder of The Chicago Teen Poetry Festival: Louder Than A Bomb , Kevin teaches creative writing with Young Chicago Authors to build the emerging youth writing community in Chicago and around the country.

Krista Franklin is a poet, visual artist and educator who hails from Dayton, OH, and currently works and resides in Chicago, IL. Her poems and visual art have appeared in/on several literary journals and websites, including Nexus Literary and Art Journal , Warpland, Obsidian III , nocturnes 2: (re)view of the literary arts , www.semantikon.com , www.milkmag.org , www.ambulant.org , and www.errataandcontradiction.org .   She has also been published in the anthologies The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order and Bum Rush The Page: a def poetry jam.   She is a Cave Canem fellow, and was a featured poet in the 2000 New Voices New Worlds Series in St. Louis, MO.

Paula Gilovich started writing plays three years ago and has since authored, The Rat Bush, Hospital Party, The Authentics, Shove , and From the Door to the Car . She was featured in The Rhino Theatre Festival in 2003 and 2004, with The Rat Bush and The Authentics.   She is currently directing a performance for Los Manos Gallery. Before writing and directing plays, she won several prizes for her work as a poet and fiction writer. As a teacher, she has taught zine-writing, essay-writing, playwriting, fiction and poetry. She was a featured writer at Mayor Daley's Book Club 2005. As a journalist, she has written over 50 articles and has worked with The Stranger, Allure Magazine and The New York Times . She is the co-editor of The Rendezvous Reader and The Stranger's Guide to Seattle . As a recipient of the Trustee Fellowship, she received her M.F.A in Writing at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago in 2004.

Idris Goodwin , playwright, performer, director, and educator, holds a BA in Film & Video from Columbia College, Chicago and an MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2001 he co-founded Hermit Arts, a non-profit performing arts organization. For Hermit Arts he has written and co-produced eight full-length plays at venues such as The Curious Theater Branch (for the Rhinoceros Theater Festival), Prop Thtr, and Chicago Cultural Center. He is the recent recipient of the NEA/TCG Theatre Residency Program for Playwrights for 2004. He was most recently commissioned by The Maxwell Street Preservation Coalition to adapt Ira Berkow's Maxwell Street: Survival in a Bazaar . As an educator, Goodwin has taught writing and performance workshops all over the city for numerous programs such as with Interfaith Refugee and Immigration Ministries, City as a Classroom, Perspectives Charter School and Free Street Theater.

Michael Haeflinger is the Performances Manager at Young Chicago Authors. He has co-ordinated the 2004-2005 season of WordPlay, YCA's weekly youth-oriented open mic, as well as the SpeakOut! CD project (2004). In March 2005, he acted as Event Co-ordinator of Louder Than a Bomb: The 5th Annual Chicago Teen Poetry Festival.              

Mr. Haeflinger has performed poetry and music in Chicago, Dayton, Minneapolis, San Francisco, North Smithfield, RI, Elma, IA, Cincinnati, the bus station in Memphis, and in the backs of cars, in various fields, and on several unremarkable street corners throughout the US.        

In 1997, he co-founded the Mad River Poets, a poetry troupe in Dayton, OH. Duties included settling the money with surly and forgetful bar owners, finding microphones that worked, and booking house bands that often drowned out the voices of the poets.            

A 1998 graduate of Wright State University, he focused particularly on eastern philosophy, if for no other reason than to keep his conservative Christian grandmother on her toes.   And on her toes she was!            

In 2003, he relocated to Chicago.   He joined the YCA team and hung around until he got keys.   Who knows what the future holds?   His grandma thinks he's bound for hell, but all things considered, she's probably wrong.             

Mr. Haeflinger is fond of writing about himself in the third person. As Commissioner of Major League Baseball, he would keep the DH rule, but do away with Interleague Games during the regular season.

Toni Asante Lightfoot is a writer, performer, educator and activist. Her teaching career started at the age of 16 when she got a summer job learning to teach art to first graders from experienced teachers. In college, she taught junior high students science through a health-based program. After leaving civil engineering to become a writer, Lightfoot dedicated her life to teaching creative writing through varied disciplines. As a performer/writer, Lightfoot co-wrote, directed and acted in two plays: Jazz, Wine & Poetry-An almost love story and, Everything I Never Told You Became A Poem, which debuted at The National Theater in Washington, D.C.

Lightfoot specializes in teaching creative writing to supplement grammar, social studies, language arts, physics and English classes.   Ms. Lightfoot has taught creative writing programs to people from 8 to 69 years of age as part of the D.C. WritersCorp and in library systems of Washington, D.C.; Boston, MA; Trinidad & Tobago; and Chicago, IL.   With the Chicago Park District, she developed an arts and writing curriculum "Visualizing The Me Yet To Come" combining visual art and poetry to explore ways for student artists to reach their dreams.   While working at South Shore High School, Ms. Lightfoot taught the history of the Harlem Renaissance, Black Arts Movement and Hip-Hop using the creative writing and social issues that helped to create the art of each time. Ms. Lightfoot takes disparate subjects and relates them together using creative writing and her students prove comprehension in their writing.

Jenn Morea is the author of the chapbook where the ending begins (nappyhead press, 1999) and editor of dream in yourself (Tia Chucha Press, 1997), an anthology of literary works from Chicago's award-winning youth arts employment program, Gallery 37. Her poems have appeared in The Columbia Poetry Review, Wicked Alice, The Clockhouse Review, Say What, and Power Lines: A Decade of Poetry from Chicago's Guild Complex . Her book-manuscript, Infinity Room , was a finalist in the 2003 National Poetry Series. She was awarded 3rd place in the Poetry Center of Chicago's 9th Annual Juried Reading selected by Anne Waldman. Her recent work was a finalist for a 2003 Guild Complex Poetry Fellowship and in 2004, she was a finalist for a Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig (Ireland) Fellowship. Morea has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Goddard College and is the recipient of fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.   She has been a literary teaching artist for more than eight years and has led workshops in hospitals, public schools and universities. She has edited more than twenty anthologies of writing by Chicago youth. Her work was featured in ROOM: Emily Dickinson's white spaces at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's 1926 Exhibition Studies Space. Morea currently teaches for Project AIM through the Office of Community Arts Partnerships at Columbia College.

A. Tacuma Roeback is a graduate of Chicago State University and Florida A&M University. He has written for various publications including, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, The Phoenix New Times, The Tallahassee Democrat, and The Tennessean (Nashville, TN). He currently serves as a music critic for popular hip-hop site, okayplayer.com. Roeback is also an in-house editor for Third World Press, Inc. and an adjunct instructor in English at Chicago State University. He is currently working on his first novel, Torched.

David Rosenstock received his B.A. from The New School and his M.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been published in The Brooklyn Review and OurStories.com. He is a Poet-In-Residence at the Poetry Center of Chicago.

avery r. young - writer / educator / performance artist. energetic n potent are two words that describe avery r. young who has been a staple in the spoken word community since 1996. he has been featured on hbo .. bet .... mtv n vh1. he's won several slams across the country n he has performed at venues all over america n abroad. he classifies his style of writin n performance as urban hymns you experience at a sunday mornin juke joint. his blend of spoken word / jazz/ gospel n chant distinguishes him from any other poet on the scene today. his work for schools and community organizations has made him not only an artist but also advocate fo/such social dilemmas like h.i.v., domestic violence, education reform and reading comprehension. Mr. young edited absractvision n is a columnist fo/say what magazine. avery r. young truly is the embodiment of the chicago poetry renaissance.