Venus Jones is a message mentor and helps emerging sheroes find their signature stories through the power of poetry and the healing arts. She felt abandoned by her own birth mother at the age of two, before a woman named Rose helped her rise. Thanks to the kindness of a stranger, faith in a higher power, and resiliency, Venus still seeks to give back the love she received. She’s still keeping her inner light on, even when the world around her turns dark.

Through it all, she’s been recognized as an award-winning radio personality, an accomplished actress, model, poet, and educator. She grew up in Akron, Ohio, nurtured countless emerging artists in Tampa Bay, Florida, her second home, and recently served as an associate English and Communication professor at Mission College. Her poems have appeared in several printed anthologies and online journals. Other publications include a mobile iPhone holiday app, four spoken word albums and three books entitled, She Rose, Kwanzaa: Living on Principle and Lyrics for Langston. She’s even been endorsed by the family of the legendary Langston Hughes.

She’s been a leader in the Shero movement, a TEDx presenter, and a poetry slam finalist at the Austin International Poetry Festival. Her one-woman show, “Poetic Soldier” earned her “Most Inspiring Solo Performance at the Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival.” Her short play “Race and War” was featured at the Tampa Bay Theatre Festival.

Venus earned her MFA in English and Creative Writing from Mills College in 2014, and she was one of the honored commencement speakers that same year. She’s worked for two television networks including HSN, where she was a backstage coordinator, and MTV, where she was local correspondent. She’s also opened for Def Poetry on Broadway. Her image has appeared in countless commercials, in a Marvel movie, on a billboard, and it has graced the cover of Spoken Vizions magazine. Yet her greatest achievement has been finding true love and maintaining a healthy matrimony for over 20 years.

One of her favorite quotes is by Alice Walker – “The most common way people give up their power is by believing they don’t have any.”

Tureeda Mikell a.k.a. Toreadah—Story Medicine Woman, Poet Instructor, Chi Gong Energy Therapist, award-winning poet, educator—is director of Tree of Life Health Literacy Project, published nationally and internationally, published over 60 at risk student anthologies throughout 4 counties in the San Francisco bay area, was Eth-Noh-Tec NU Wa International Storytelling Delegate in Beijing, China, October 2018, was delegate for National and International Writing Project, Writing for the Urban Child.

Tureeda has been called an Activist for Holism, Word Magician, and Woman of Truths hell bent on Asserting Life. She has introduced renowned poets and writers such as The Last poets, Amiri Baraka, Marvin X, and a host of other established writers and poets.

Recent publications include, Black Gold, The Anthology, Reflections (in collaboration with Emmy Award winning artist James Gayles,) and 20 Year Anniversary of Drum Voices Revue, Volume 17.

‍Tureeda draws upon her other lives as a nurse, lab tech in a psychiatric institution, and investigative news reporter. Her manuscript entitled ‘Synchronicity’ was recently accepted by Nomadic Press for 2019 publication.

Dr. Melinda Luisa de Jesús is Chair and Associate Professor of Diversity Studies at California College of the Arts. She writes and teaches about Asian American cultural production, girl culture, monsters, and race/ethnicity in the United States.

She will be on sabbatical in 2018-2019.

She was recently awarded the 2018-2019 Muriel Gold Senior Visiting Professorship at the Institute for Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies at McGill University in Montreal.

She is also a poet, and has published five chapbooks Locofo Chaps/Moria Poetry in 2017: Humpty Drumpfty and Other Poems,  Petty Poetry for Scrotus’ Girls, Defying Trumplandia, Adios, Trumplandia!, and James Brown’s Wig and Other Poems.  Her poems have appeared in Rat’s Ass Review, Konch Magazine, and Rabbit and Rose.

Her first collection of poetry, peminology, was released by Paloma Press in March 2018.  More about her poetry is available here.

She edited Pinay Power: Peminist Critical Theory, the first anthology of Filipina/American feminisms (Routledge 2005). Her scholarly writing has appeared in Completely Mixed Up: Mixed Heritage Asian North American Writing and Art, Mothering in East Asian Communities: Politics and Practices, Approaches to Teaching Multicultural Comics; Ethnic Literary Traditions in Children’s Literature; Challenging Homophobia; The Lion and the Unicorn; Meridians; MELUS; Radical Teacher; The Journal of Asian American Studies; and Delinquents and Debutantes: Twentieth Century American Girls’ Culture.

She recently coordinated three CCA Diversity Studies conferences: Border/Fracture (2016),  Under the Radar (2013) and Doing Diversity (2010).

In 2011-12 she was the Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Women’s Studies, University of York, UK, where she convened the international conference After Girl Power: What’s Next? in February 2012.

She is a mezzo-soprano, a mom, an Aquarian, and admits an obsession with Hello Kitty.

MK Chavez is the award-winning author of Mothermorphosis, Dear Animal, Virgin Eyes, and a Brief History Of The Selfie.

Chavez has received fellowships from Hedgebrook, CantoMundo, Squaw Valley Writers Workshop, Caldera.

VONA, North Street Collective Residence Program, Real Time & Space Elevate Residency, and Napa Valley Writers Workshop.

She is co-founder/curator of the reading series Lyrics & Dirges, co-director of the Berkeley Poetry Festival, and has been a guest curator of limited reading series at BAMPFA, and LOTERIA in partnership with the Institute of (Advanced) Uncertainty.

She has been a visiting instructor at Stanford University, San Francisco State University, Mills College, Berkeley City College, San Francisco City College, BAMPFA, and Hedgebrook.

She is the recipient of an Alameda County Arts Leadership Award, the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award, and was recognized by the Berkeley Public Library Foundation at their 18th Award Dinner in 2019. Her most recent publications can be found in bags of coffee from Nomadic Coffee and on the Academy of American Poets website’s Poem-A-Day series.

MK featured in the Peninsula Virtual Bookfest co-hosted by Burlingame Public Library.

Natasha Dennerstein was born in Melbourne, Australia, to a family originating in Belarus. She worked as a psychiatric nurse for many years, which gave her an interesting perspective on the human condition. Natasha studied creative writing at Whitireia polytechnic in New Zealand and went on to take her Masters in creative writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University. She has an MFA from San Francisco State University.

Natasha has had poetry published in Fourth Floor, Landfall, Snorkel, JAAM, Takahe, Bloom, Transfer and Red Light Lit, Foglifter, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Sparkle+Blink.

Natasha is currently on the editorial team of Nomadic Press in Oakland. She is a good copy-editor and takes editing assignments for manuscripts, theses, press releases and anything.

Her debut collection of poetry, Anatomize, was published by Norfolk Press in 2015. With this collection, Natasha was aiming for universality, moving away from the poetry of place and origins to attempt to write poetry that can be appreciated by any human. She is interested in the things that humans have in common rather than the things that differentiate people, one from the other. She was writing towards figuring out what it means to be a human being.

Her latest collection, Triptych Caliform, was launched on September 15th, 2016. Natasha featured in the Peninsula Virtual Bookfest co-hosted by Burlingame Public Library.

Thea [thee-uh] Matthews is a poet, author, and educator originally from San Francisco, California. She attained her BA in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley; and studied June Jordan’s program Poetry for the People led by Aya de Leon.

Her debut poetry collection Unearth [The Flowers] (Red Light Lit Press, 2020) is listed as part of Kirkus Reviews’s Best Indie Poetry of 2020.

Some of her work has appeared in The New Republic, Atlanta Review, Green Mountains Review, Tahoma Literary Review, the Rumpus, and others.

Currently, Thea Matthews is an MFA Poetry candidate at New York University; and teaches at the Writing Salon. She also serves as the Donald Everett Axinn Fellow at the Academy of American Poets.

Thea featured in Power to the Poets and the Peninsula Virtual Bookfest co-hosted by Burlingame Public Library.

Jan Steckel was a Harvard- and Yale-trained pediatrician who took care of Spanish-speaking children until chronic pain persuaded her to change professions to writer, poet and medical editor. She is an activist for bisexual and disability rights who lives in Oakland, California.

Her poetry book The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011) won a 2012 Lambda Literary Award. Her fiction chapbook Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) and poetry chapbook The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006) also won awards. Her creative writing has appeared in Scholastic Magazine, Yale Medicine, Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her work won the Goodreads Newsletter Poetry Contest, a Zeiser Grant for Women Artists, the Jewel by the Bay Poetry Competition, Triplopia’s Best of the Best competition, and three Pushcart nominations.

Robert S. Pesich is the editor for Swan Scythe Press and is the author of Model Organism.

He also works as a lab manager / research associate for Stanford University School of Medicine and Palo Alto Veterans Institute for Research. He is the President of Poetry Center San José and Coordinator for the Well-RED Reading Series, co-sponsored by the gallery Works/San José art and performance center.

His literary work has appeared in many journals and reviews such as Apercus Quarterly, The Bitter Oleander, Circulo de Poesia (Mexico City), CutBank, Oyez Review, Red Wheelbarrow, Slipstream and others. He was awarded the Littoral Press Poetry Prize and fellowships from Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation as well as an artist fellowship from Arts Council Silicon Valley. He lives with his family in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Randy James received an MFA in Writing from the University of San Francisco. He has also studied at UCLA. His work has been published in Myriad, Westwind, Red Cedar Review, Palette, FEM Newsmagazine and The Rumpus. Randy has performed in venues across Los Angeles and The San Francisco Bay Area. His work was featured in Hayat Hyatt’s “Villanelle,” which has been archived by Collectif Jeune Cinema. He is also a co-founder of At the Door, a monthly reading series that uplifts and features Black and Brown voices. James’ debut chapbook, Shifters, is now available on Nomadic Press. 

Poem on Belonging

Presented at San Mateo Pride 2021