Fabu is the third Madison Poet Laureate and a graduate from the UW-Madison in African Languages and Literature and Afro-American Studies. She serves the Madison community as a literary artist (poet and storyteller) and educator. As a literary artist, she creates and shares poetry reflecting her life spent in Memphis, Tennessee, Nairobi, Kenya and Madison, Wisconsin. Her poetry has appeared in Callaloo, PMS (Poems, Memoirs and Stories), Southern Women's Review, Black Books Bulletin, The Wisconsin Academy Review, UMOJA magazine, Rosebud Magazine, The Madison Times, The Capital City Hues and Verse Wisconsin. She is also a monthly columnist for The Capital Times and The Capital City Hues newspapers. She has a new book, Poems, Dreams and Roses published in December 2009. The University of Nairobi will published In Our Own Tongues in 2010. Parallel Press will publish African American Life in Haiku in 2011. Her poetry most often focuses on African Americans, women and children. She recently performed original poetry about Mary Lou Williams at the Overture on May 2nd to a sold-out performance.
Angie Trudell Vasquez is a Latina activist poet from Des Moines, IA by way of Seattle, WA where she lived for many years. In Seattle she was a member of the literary group, Los Nortenos, and helped produce many literary art shows. She was a featured reader at Bumbershoot, Seattle’s Music & Arts Festival in 2003. Her work has appeared in print and on stage in the Pacific Northwest and in the Midwest. Most recently, she was the featured poet in the play, The Latina Monologues, which debuted in March 2009 at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and was reprised in October 2009. Several of her poems were selected for the play, and a portion of the play was filmed for Milwaukee Public Television’s show Adelante and a short documentary about it can be found here. Her first book, The Force Your Face Carries, was self-published in 2005 under own label, Art Night Books. It sold out. She re-released it in 2009. It’s available at Woodland Pattern Book Center, the Riverwest Co-op & Café and from the press' website. Look for Love in War Time, her second book, to be released soon.
Hailing from the center of the Pacific Ocean, William Giles is an islander living in rising waters. He is an artist who understands the need for simple wisdoms found in cultural traditions; especially in the information renaissance that we live in today. In 2006 Will began tutelage with his second family, Youth Speaks Hawaii, as he learned to shape his words and value the breath they are spoken upon. In 2008 he was the Youth Speaks Hawaii Slam Champion, and led the 5 person team to a National Championship that summer at Brave New Voices in Washington D.C. Moving into a mentorship role, Will recently served as a Youth Speaks Hawaii Artist in Residency at several public high schools. Now a member of the First Wave Hip-Hop Theater Ensemble at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he is honored to bring multicultural arts, spoken word, and hip-hop culture to the forefront of education and activism. William is excited for all opportunities to learn, heal, and share his inherited and integrated cultures with fellow travelers on the journey."
Traci Brimhall is the author of Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press), winner of the 2009 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. Her poems have appeared in New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Slate, The Missouri Review, Kenyon Review Online, FIELD, Indiana Review, and Southern Review. She is a former Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and a former Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers' Conference. Her work has also received Pushcart Prize nominations, a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize.
