Identity and story, word and action combine in an energizing evening of poetry from three New York-based spoken word artists. This free performance and structured dialogue will be led by members of the Dialogue Arts Project, an innovative, arts-based consulting group. Through creative engagement, personal storytelling, and collaboration across difference, DAP reimagines the “diversity” training curriculum. All are invited to this opening performance; join us for light refreshments and about 45 minutes of poetry, followed by a Q&A with the performers.

Sofía Snow is an artist, educator, and organizer.  Her work has been featured in a range of literary publications, as well as in The Boston Globe, Cosmopolitan Magazine, Generation Progress, and elsewhere. Sofía is currently the Deputy Director of Urban Word NYC, a literary arts organization serving 35,000 youth across all five boroughs of New York City.

Jon Sands is the author of The New Clean (2011, Write Bloody Publishing), as well as the co-host of The Poetry Gods Podcast. His work has been published widely, and anthologized in The Best American Poetry. He's a Youth Mentor with Urban Word-NYC, and teaches creative writing for adults at Bailey House in East Harlem (an HIV/AIDS service center). He's an MFA Graduate in Fiction from Brooklyn College, where his work won the Himan Brown Award for short stories, and he's represented New York City multiple times at the National Poetry Slam. He lives in Brooklyn. 

Desiree C. Bailey is a poet, writer and educator. She is the author of the fiction chapbook In Dirt or Saltwater (O'Clock Press, 2016). Her work is published in Best American Poetry 2015, Callaloo, Washington Square Review and The Rumpus, among other publications. She has a BA from Georgetown University and MFA from Brown University. She has received fellowships from the New York State Council on the Arts/New York Foundation for the Arts, Poets House, Kimbilio Fiction, The Conversation, the Norman Mailer Center,  Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop and Princeton in Africa. She is a recipient of the 2013 Poets and Writer's Amy Award. Desiree was born in Trinidad and Tobago and lives in New York, where she teaches English at CUNY's Borough of Manhattan Community College. She is also an assistant poetry editor at Anomaly.