Growth Workshop
FOR EDITING + DEVELOPING CRAFT
MEET THE MENTORS
JULIAN RANDALL, CURRENT WORKSHOP MENTOR
Julian Randall is a Living Queer Black poet from Chicago. A recipient of multiple fellowships, Julian is the winner of a Pushcart Prize. He holds an MFA in Poetry from Ole Miss. His writing has appeared in New York Times Magazine, POETRY, and The Atlantic. Julian is the author of Refuse (Pitt, 2018), winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award, The Pilar Ramirez Duology (Holt Books for Young Readers) and The Dead Don’t Need Reminding: Essays (Bold Type Books, 2023). He can be found at @JulianThePoet and on his website JulianDavidRandall.com.
*Available for Growth A 2023
ROSEBUD BEN-ONI, REPRESENTED ARTIST
Born to a Mexican mother and Jewish father, Rosebud Ben-Oni is the winner of 2019 Alice James Award for If This Is the Age We End Discovery (March 2021), which received a Starred Review in Booklist and was a Finalist for the 2021 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry. She is also the author of turn around, BRXGHT XYXS (Get Fresh Books, 2019) and the chapbook 20 Atomic Sonnets (Black Warrior Review, 2020) in honor of the Periodic Table’s 150th Birthday.
She has received fellowships and grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, City Artists Corps, CantoMundo and Queens Council on the Arts. Her work appears in POETRY, The American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, Poetry Society of America (PSA), The Poetry Review (UK), Poetry Wales, Tin House, Guernica, Electric Literature, among others. Her poem "Poet Wrestling with Angels in the Dark" was commissioned by the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in NYC, and published by The Kenyon Review Online, and her poem “Dancing with Kiko on the Moon” was featured in Tracy K. Smith’s The Slowdown. In May 2022, Paramount commissioned her video essay “My Judaism is a Wild Unplace" for a campaign for Jewish Heritage Month, which appears on Paramount Network, MTV Networks, The Smithsonian Channel, VH1 and many others.
*Available for Growth B 2023
ARIANA BROWN, REPRESENTED ARTIST
Ariana Brown is a queer Black Mexican American poet from the Southside of San Antonio, Texas, now based in Houston, Texas. She is the author of the poetry collections We Are Owed. (Grieveland, 2021) and Sana Sana (Game Over Books, 2020). Ariana's work investigates queer Black personhood in Mexican American spaces, Black relationality and girlhood, loneliness, and care. Her debut poetry EP, LET US BE ENOUGH, is available on Bandcamp.
She holds a B.A. in African Diaspora Studies and Mexican American Studies from UT Austin, an M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of Pittsburgh, and is pursuing an M.L.S. in Library and Information Science from the University of North Texas. Ariana is a 2014 national collegiate poetry slam champion and owes much of her practice to Black performance communities led by Black women poets from the South. She has been writing, performing, and teaching poetry for over ten years. Follow Ariana on Twitter and Instagram @ArianaThePoet.
*Available for Growth B 2023
LUTHER HUGHES, REPRESENTED ARTIST
CYNTHIA DEWI OKA, REPRESENTED POET
Cynthia Dewi Oka is the author of Fire Is Not a Country (2021) and Salvage (2017) from Northwestern University Press, and Nomad of Salt and Hard Water (2016) from Thread Makes Blanket Press. A recipient of the Tupelo Quarterly Poetry Prize and the Leeway Transformation Award, her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, POETRY, Academy of American Poets, The Rumpus, PANK, Guernica, ESPNW, and elsewhere. In collaboration with Philadelphia Contemporary, Friends of the Rail Park, and Asian Arts Initiative, her experimental poem, Future Revisions, was exhibited at the Rail Park billboard in Philadelphia from July to August 2021. She has taught creative writing at Bryn Mawr College and is a 2021-2022 Poet in Residence at the Amy Clampitt House in Lenox, MA. She is originally from Bali, Indonesia.
ANGEL NAFIS, CURRENT WORKSHOP MENTOR
Angel Nafis is the author of BlackGirl Mansion (Red Beard Press, 2012). She earned her BA at Hunter College and her MFA in poetry at Warren Wilson College. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed Reader, them, Poetry Magazine, The BreakBeat Poets anthologies series, and elsewhere. Nafis is the recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem, Millay Colony, the Poetry Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Founder and curator of the Greenlight Bookstore Poetry Salon, she is also half of the ODES FOR YOU Tour with poet, musician, and visual artist Shira Erlichman, and with poet Morgan Parker, she runs The Other Black Girl Collective. Reading poems and facilitating workshops across the country she lives and works in Brooklyn.
*Available for Growth B 2023
