BIOS - A to E

	Demosthenes Agrafiotis (1946-) is a multi-media artist, poet and painter of the international Avant-Garde. In the 1980s he edited the artistic journal KLINAMEN. His poetry is influenced by Concrete, Visual and New Visual multimedia poetries, Performance, Fluxus, French Language Poetry, Sound poetics, Film theory, Semiotics, and Anthropology. He published the following books: Isomorphismes, (1973) Dimensions of writing (1976. Distances (1977) "Micro-cyclo-flux" (1979) Dialytika (1982) Chinese notebook (1989) Y,es (1992) Topoems (1997) Lexicones [web-art-poetry], http://www.multimania.com/lexicones (in collaboration with A. Iacovella). Lightly, lightly (Athens: Erato Editions, 2000). Maribor (2004).
	Youssef Alaoui-Fdili is a Moroccan-Latino, born in California. His family and heritage are an endless source of inspiration for his varied, dark, spiritual and carnal writings. He has an MFA in Poetics from New College of California. There, he studied Classical Arabic, Spanish Baroque and Contemporary Moroccan poetry. He is also well versed in the most dour and macabre literature of the 19th Century. His poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, 580 Split, Cherry Bleeds, Carcinogenic Poetry, Red Fez, Big Bridge, Dusie Press, and nominated for a Pushcart at Full of Crow. Youssef is an original creator of the East Bay literary arts festival "Beast Crawl." Photo credit Sophia Leisou. Sophie Sticated Designs
	Abigail Allen grew up in Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana. Her work has been published in numerous journals, including Xavier Review, Mississippi Review, Mid-American Review, Nebo, Confrontation, Crania, Apalachee Quarterly, and Phantasmagoria. She has also published work in New World Writing, Many Mountains Moving, Forge, and Phantasmagoria under the pseudonym Hiram Goza. Her novel, Birds of Paradise, was published under that name in 2005.
	Aditi Angiras is a poet and activist based in New Delhi, India. Her writing deals with politics, desire, modern love and all things queer and feminist. She is also the founder of Bring Back The Poets, a spoken word poetry initiative that deals with politics, sexuality and activism through poetry in public spaces. She is actively involved in the quest for and the creation of de-institutionalized and anti-establishment spaces for discussions/poetry/love/living.
	Sarantis Antiochos (Zante, Greece, 1938) Greek expatriate poet, since 1968. Lived in England, Luxembourg and Spain. At present he lives in Madrid. Some of his books in Greek are: Leaves of a Diary (1965), Marginalia (1982), Tattoo (1985), Prelundia for Zante (1988), Con-fusion of aromas (1989), Window at noon (1995), In effect (2000), Advanced circle (2008). Also in Spanish: SER -pentinata (2015) and LuzAzul (2016). Some of his poems in Greek have been translated in Spanish and French.
	Ira Anjali Anwar is currently completing her Master's in Psycho-social Clinical studies from Ambedkar University. Originally from Bhopal, she grew up in the ruined jungles of Rishi Valley and coming to a city, like Delhi, was very bewildering. Now able to call it home, for Ira and her poetry- a space for fighting and never shutting up.
	Theodosis Athas (Nestorio Kastoria Greece 1936-New York City 1973) was a Greek American. A talented poet and radio broadcaster, his poetry was greatly influenced by Beat poets Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Gregory Corso. He wrote "blues" mixing American and Greek themes. Under the pseudonym Lynnaios he published "Songs in the Time of Silence" and left many poems unpublished. He died at 37 years old.
	Yukta Bajracharya loves poetry, conversations and caffeine. She found spoken word poetry four years ago, in a workshop and the slam poetry competition that followed. From then on, she has been writing, performing and "teaching" spoken word poetry as a part of Word Warriors, a spoken word group based in Kathmandu which she was one of the founding members of. Currently, she is working as a Program Coordinator for a spoken word project called Write to Speak, through which she will be working with a team of Word Warriors to introduce performance poetry to Nepali youth from diverse communities in Nepal. She believes in the power of words, has figured out that teaching is her alternative for therapy and (just like she was told by one of her inspirations) that one can find poetry in the most unexpected of places —just like love.
	Thakur Belbase has to his credit three collection of poems: Sagarko Oripari Manharuko Samoroha (2001), Achanak yo saanjh (2011) and Trash ma ishwar (2013). He works as a senior radio and television journalist at Image Channel in Kathmandu.
	Sheena Baharudin is a poet-educator, travel & lifestyle writer, author of Rhymes for Mending Hearts and founder of Numinous i.e. the multidisciplinary KL-based gig which has featured more than a hundred local and international artists since 2012. Currently pursuing her PhD in Malaysian Literature, her second book of poems is scheduled for publication in 2016.
	Michelle Brooks has published a collection of poetry, Make Yourself Small (Backwaters Press) and a novella, Dead Girl, Live Boy (Storylandia Press). Her work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Threepenny Review, Iowa Review and elsewhere. A native Texan, she has spent most of her adult life in Detroit, her favorite city. She loves photography, particularly the work of Joel Meyerowitz, Robert Frank, and Diane Arbus.
	Daniel Bănulescu, one of Romania's most prominent authors today, writes from an ironic self-vaunting pose, as the titles of many of his books suggest. His poetry includes I'll Love You to the End of the Bed (1993), The Ballad of Daniel Bănulescu (1997), The Federal Republic of Daniel Bănulescu (2000), and It’s Good to be Daniel Bănulescu (selected poems, 2010, where these poems derive). His novels are provocative and fantastical: I Kiss Your Ass, Adored Leader! (1994)—rewritten as Flee from Your Revolting and Hideous Life into My Book (2009), The Seven Kings of the City of Bucharest (1998), and The Best Novel of All Time (2008). His first play, Who Won the World War of Religions? (2001), came out from University of Plymouth Press in 2010 in an English translation by Alistair Ian Blyth. Bănulescu has also been translated into German, and he was a recent guest at the Poetry International Festival Rotterdam. Poems of his from It’s Good to be Daniel Bănulescu have been published in The Pedestal, The American Reader, Toad Suck Review, Apiary, Prairie Schooner, Scapegoat Review, Salamander, Calypso Friends and Isthmus and are forthcoming in Blackbird.
	Khairani Barokka (b. 1985) is an Indonesian writer, poet, artist, and disability and arts (self-)advocate in London. Among her honors, she was an NYU Tisch Departmental Fellow for her Masters, Emerging Writers Festival's (AUS) Inaugural International Writer-In-Residence, and Indonesia's first Writer-In-Residence at Vermont Studio Center. Okka is the writer/performer/producer of, among others, a deaf-accessible, solo spoken word/art show, "Eve and Mary Are Having Coffee". It premiered at Edinburgh Fringe 2014 as Indonesia's only representative, with a grant from HIVOS. She was recognized in 2014 by UNFPA as one of Indonesia's "Inspirational Young Leaders Driving Social Change" for "raising awareness of disability through inclusive arts", and has been awarded six residencies, with a seventh upcoming. Published internationally in anthologies and journals, Okka has presented work extensively, in nine countries, is co-editor of forthcoming "HEAT", an anthology of Southeast Asian urban writing (Buku Fixi Publishing, 2016), the author of forthcoming poetry-art book "Indigenous Species" (Tilted Axis Press, 2016), and a PhD-by-practice candidate at Goldsmiths, as an LPDP Scholar. (photo by Wasi Daniju)
	Alexandros Baras (1906-1990) was a poet of the Greek diaspora of Constantinople and Alexandria. He wrote poetry, prose, and travel writings. He was a great poet but went unnoticed by the critics.
	Art Beck has published several collections of poetry and poetry translations, most recently Luxorius Opera Omnia, a Duet for Sitar and Trombone (Otis College, Seismicity Editions), which was awarded the 2013 Northern California Book award for poetry in translation. His poetry and essays have appeared in a wide range of literary journals, including Alaska Quarterly, Artful Dodge, OR, Sequoia, Translation Review, and in anthologies such as Heyday Books's California Poetry from the Gold Rush to the Present and Painted Bride Quarterly's 20-year retrospective. He was also a regular contributor to Rattle's since-discontinued e-issues with a regular series on translating poetry. He's currently translating the Roman epigrammist Martial with the intent of compiling a good sized selection centered around Martial's rarely translated arena poems. A chapbook of his Martial translations is due out this winter, edited by Paul Vangelisti and published by Magra Editions. A related essay in Your Impossible Voice can be accessed at: http://www.yourimpossiblevoice.com/triptychs/
	Bhupeen is a representative voice of Nepali poem and essay. He has three poetry collections Kshatigrasta Prithvi ra Mool Sadak (Wrecked Earth and the Highway), Hajar Varshako Nidra (A Thousand Years' Sleep), Suplako Hawaijahaj (Aeroplane of Supla) and a collection of essays Chaubis Reel (Twenty Four Reels) to his credit. He also has received awards for his poems. Bhupeen teaches at a college in his home town Chitwan and is a founder and activist of Conservation Poetry Movement.
	Zak Block 's fictions have appeared in Defenestration, Quail Bell Magazine, Gadfly Online, Paper Darts, and Crack the Spine, among others. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of (the) Squawk Back, an online literary journal of transgression and alienation, baptized by fire in May of 2011.
	Panos Bosnakis (b. 1960 ) is a Professor of Comparative Literature and Poetics, poet, critic and Director of the Center for Avant-Garde Studies. He teaches only innovative courses with deep social impact on planet and future change that are highly enlightening to the youth in selected Universities around the world. Poetry and Literary civilization are weapons for the youth to change themselves and understand their higher mission in humanity. He is an archivist of world and non-western Avant-Gardes and a rare book collector of Greek and English literary books. His scholarship is breathtaking and original and ranges from oldest ancient poetries, ancient Greek, Latin, European and American literatures and 20th century literatures. He is also a prolific multi-fashioned poet whose work ranges from Language Poetry, Objectivism, Performance poetry to Sound and New Media Poetry and is presented in Biennals, Festivals, Cultural Capitals of Europe, in Universities and Literary Associations and other international venues. He is also a passionate translator of poetry and theory. A list of his poetry works can be found here https://panosbosnakis.wordpress.com/
	Geoff Bouvier 's first book of poetry, Living Room, won the 2005 APR/Honickman Prize, and was published by Copper Canyon. Hie second, Glass Harmonica, appeared in 2011 from Quale Press. He holds an MFA from Bard College's Milton Avery Graduate School and a PhD in creative writing from Florida State University.
	Nicolas Calas (1907-1988) was a legendary polemicist, art critic, author and poet of the international Avant-Garde movement. His life was full of adventure and wisdom, a brilliant intellectual radical mind. His poetry was never included in any official presentation or publication, almost banned and humiliated by the poetry establishment in Greece. Exiled from Greece, he left for Paris to join the Surrealists and Andre Breton and became a French legend. He later escaped to Lisbon to save himself from Fascism and Franco. In 1945 he made it to the United States where he was highly esteemed as a first-class art critic of Abstract Expressionism, Popular Art, Modern and Postmodern Art. He worked almost with all the avant-gardist reviews and publications in the States and remained a life-time friend of James Laughlin. Perhaps one of the best poets in Greece although still to this day he remains largely unrecognized. He wrote poetry in Greek with some poems in English and French. His theoretical books include the following: Hearths of Arson (French: Foyers d'incendie, 1938), Confound the Wise (1942), Primitive Heritage (co-edited with Margaret Mead, 1953), The Peggy Guggenheim Collection of Modern Art (co-written with Elena Calas, 1967), Art in the Age of Risk (1968), Icons and Images of the Sixties (co-written with Elena Calas, 1971), Surrealism Pro & Con (1973), Essays on Poetry and Aesthetics (in Greek, 1982, Transfigurations (1985).
	James R. Campbell is a reporter who has worked at a dozen newspapers in Texas, Colorado, Kansas and Missouri. His poems and stories have been in a number of literary magazines in the U.S. and Europe.
	Michael Castro , called "a legend in St. Louis poetry" by Charles Guenther in the St. Louis Post Dispatch, is a widely published poet and translator. How Things Stack Up is his fifteenth book. Castro is a founder of the literary organization and magazine River Styx, in continuous operation since 1975. For twenty years he hosted the legendary River Styx at Duff's Poetry Series. He has spread the word of poetry off the page for decades, organizing readings and hosting three literary radio programs. He has read his poems on three continents, including many collaborative performances with musicians. His translations of Hungarian poetry are published in many magazines in the United States and Europe and in five books. His aural/oral work is recorded on six albums. Castro is the recipient of the Guardian Angel of St. Louis Poetry Award from River Styx and the Warrior Poet Award from Word in Motion, both for lifetime achievement. In 2015 he was named St. Louis's first Poet Laureate.
	Mary Childs , PhD, is a lecturer at the University of Washington, in the Comparative History of Ideas Department. She teaches courses on Environmental Humanities, The Black Sea Region, and Georgian Cinema. She also works on the website, The Georgian Digital Text Collective, with bilingual presentation of Georgian Literature.
	Jennifer Anne Champion (b. 1988) is a Singaporean writer and performance poet. She is a co-founder of poetry.sg, Singapore's first national poetry archive. A strong advocate for poetry beyond the page, she is regularly invited to collaborate and teach poetry in public schools with Word Forward and the National Arts Council. Her first chapbook, A History of Clocks (Redwheelbarrow Books, 2015), contains her early performance poetry from 2013 to 2015. She is working on her forthcoming poetry collection Caterwaul, published by Math Paper Press.
	Neeli Cherkovski 's most recent poetry collections are From the Middle Woods (2011, New Native Press) and From the Canyon Outward (2009, R. L. Crowe). His collection of Philippine-inspired poems will be published by Book of Smoke Press in 2012/13. A major overview of his writing career was recently published in Or, Journal of the GraduateWriting Program, Otis College of Art and Design. His papers are in the collection of the Bancroft Library, UC.
	Cyprus Chrysanthis ( Nicosia, Cyprus 1915-1998) was a Cypriot author and poet. He published many poetry books, translations from Spanish poets, books for children, and dramas. The poems selected here are from his chapbook "Calligrammes" (1969).
	Jim Cohn is the author of books of poetry and recorded spoken word music. His prose works include Sutras & Bardos: Essays & Interviews on Allen Ginsberg, The Kerouac School, Anne Waldman, Postbeat Poets & The New Demotics (2011), The Golden Body: Meditations On The Essence Of Disability (2003) and Sign Mind: Studies In American Sign Language Poetics (1999). He is the founder of the online Museum of American Poetics (poetspath.com) and lives in Boulder County, CO.
	Zazil Alaíde Collins (México, 1984). She is the author of Junkie de nada (Lenguaraz, 2009), No todas las islas (Conaculta-Instituto Sudcaliforniano de Cultura, 2012, State Poetry Award La Paz City 2011), El corazón, tan cerca de la boca (Abismos-Mantarraya, 2014) and Sipofene (La tinta del silencio, 2016). Part of her work has been translated to English and Arabic, and was selected for the General Anthology of Mexican Poetry: From the Second half of the Twentieth Century to Our Days (Océano, 2014). She is the coeditor of the project Musicians in Mexico City, together with US musician Todd Clouser. Blog: http://momalina.blogspot.mx/
	Costis was born in Athens, Greece, in 1950. A visual artist and poet. he studied in Athens and Paris and completed his studies at the level of Doctorat d' Etat, under J.F. Lyotard. In 1969, his first collage was published and he had his first solo exhibition, showcasing lead sculptures. He was the editor of two literary and art magazines published in Athens, Lotus (1968-1972) and Praxis (1972). His first book of poetry was published in Athens in February 1974. Since 1970, he has been a regular contributor of essays, articles, poems, and drawings to many magazines. In 1975, his first Performance took place at an art gallery in Athen. In 1976, using synthi100, he created the music score of his film Saga of a city. The same year he started creating mixed works of visual poetry. From 1986 onward, the lightning phenomenon is at the core of his research. A prolific artist, Costis has had 24 solo shows in galleries and museums in Europe and has participated in more than 100 international group shows. He has also engaged in a variety of projects and conferences/symposia on art, New Technologies, and poetry. Work by the artist is held in public museums and private collections, most notably in Greece, France, Belgium, and Germany. For more detailed information: http://www.costis.eu
	Born in 1995, Aanisha Cuttilan is currently completing her degree in Business Management. With a passion for writing and unrealised dreams of becoming a journalist, she now diverts all her energy and pent up talent into writing little snippets of poetry and prose in her free time. Hoping to publish her own book someday, Aanisha's writing is all about venting, expression, and freedom of speech. She is also thoroughly allergic to bullshit, a food adventurer and a common curly girl.
	Rochelle D’Silva is a page/performance poet who writes about her travels, cultural influences and personal experiences. She has love affairs with trees and hopes to live in a tree house someday. She is more poet than human and has perfect bottle-opening hands. She endorses hugs.
	Sabita Gautam Dahal is a poet of the young generation and writes with the penchant and energy of the emerging voice of women poets in Nepal. Her poems are collected in anthologies titled Neelo Simana (The Blue Border, 2010) and Antim Aakash (The Last Sky, 2016). She is also the recipient of several literary awards in Nepal.
	Theodore Dorros (pseud. of Theodore Trabadoros) (1895-1954.) He committed suicide with his wife Jeanne. Dorros was an unusual but important poet of the Greek Avant-Garde. During his life he wished to remain unknown and anonymous avoiding any participation in the Greek and the international poetry scene. Dorros emigrated in a young age to Paris and later to New York City where he directed a business company in Manhattan. He wrote only two books, In the Reverie of Salvaging (poems, Paris 1930) and Intelligence (philosophical essay, Paris 1936). It was only recently that his archive was found in France.
	Demosthenes Davvetas was born in Athens and currently lives and works in Athens and Paris. Poet, writer, painter and performer, he has published articles and essays in magazines and newspapers such as Art Forum, Art in America, Art Studio, Beaux-Arts Magazine, Galeries Magazines, Liberation, Parkett, and Risk. He has been writing for the Greek newspaper "Eleftheros Tipos" since 2010. During his career he participated in catalogue and monograph writing of important artists for museums, and gave lectures at Art schools of various Universities. Since 1996 he has been performing on a regular basis. His books include Orestes or the Novel Without End, The Song of Penelope, The Cloak of Lakoontos, The Architecture of Teardrops and In the Mirror of Orpheus.
	Tasos Denegris (1934-2009) was a poet and translator of the literary group of the periodical PALI. He published several poetry chapbooks and translated Borges, Cortazar and Paz into Greek.
	Padma Devkota is a prominent writer and critic with a number of publications to his credit including Madness of a Sort (1999), Dawn Cycle and Other Poems (2006), A Pond of Swans and Other Essays (2004), and Frosty Breath in the Wilderness (2012). Apart from English, he composes poetry in Nepali, French and Spanish.
	Tulsi Diwasa (b. 1948) is a poet and a folklorist. His poems are collected in Tulsi Diwaska kavita. He is widely published and translated in several languages
	Norman Dubie was born in Barre, Vermont in 1945, the son of a radical minister and a nurse. Dubie began writing poetry at age eleven and was influenced by both his father's Sunday sermons and his mother's tales of hospital life. Acknowledging his debt as a writer to his parents, Dubie noted in an interview with Poets & Writers magazine that "I got the weirdest introduction to writing from them-my mother, because she would come home from the hospital with the most grisly and grim, detailed stories about people dying, children dying. And she had to unload it, so she'd unload it at the supper table. We all had a love of detail, so we understood.I really learned not to blink, not to look away, from some of those things in life that are ugly and involve suffering."
	Mark DuCharme is the author, most recently, of The Unfinished: Books I-VI (BlazeVOX, 2013). Other volumes of his poetry include Answer (2011) and The Sensory Cabinet (2007), also from BlazeVOX, as well as Infinity Subsections (Meeting Eyes Bindery, 2004) and Cosmopolitan Tremble (Pavement Saw, 2002). His work appears in recent or forthcoming anthologies, including Water, Water Everywhere: Paean to a Vanishing Resource (Baksun Books & Arts, 2014),Litscapes: Collected US Writings (Steerage Press, 2015), and Poets for Living Waters: An International Response to the BP Oil Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico (forthcoming from BlazeVOX). He lives in Boulder, Colorado.
	Divya Dureja holds a Bachelor's and Master's Degree in Psychology when she isn't holding anything else in her hands. She's an in-house performer with the poetry group Delhi Poetry Slam. Other than at curated shows hosted by the group and in front of her room's mirror, she has performed her spoken word poetry on stages and spaces of Delhi University's protest movements, MTV Indies and New York Poetry Festival.
	George Economou (b. 1934) is the author of fifteen books of poetry and translations, the latest of which are Unfinished & Uncollected, Complete Plus, The Poems of C. P. Cavafy in English, Ananios of Kleitor, and Acts of Love, Ancient Greek Poetry from Aphrodite's Garden. His work has appeared regularly in Jerome Rothenberg's Technicians of the Sacred, the Poems from the Millennium series and other ground-breaking anthologies; he has also published many translations from ancient and Modern Greek and medieval European languages, including William Langland's Piers Plowman. In the late 1950s he was one of five founding editors, with Robert and Joan Kelly, of The Chelsea Review, from which the three resigned in 1960 and subsequently founded the influential magazine Trobar and Trobar Books. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Colgate in 1956 and earned a Ph. D. in medieval English and comparative literature at Columbia in 1967. In 2000, he retired, after 41 years of teaching, at the University of Oklahoma, where he was department chair of English from 1983-90 and director of Creative Writing from 1990-2000, the Brooklyn Center of Long Island University, Hunter College, and Columbia. A Rockefeller Fellow at Bellagio. and a New York CAPS Fellow in Poetry, he has been named twice as an NEA Fellow in Poetry. Economou has given readings and lectures throughout the United States and in numerous countries abroad in such venues as Harvard, Princeton, Penn, Michigan, Colgate, Texas A & M, Columbia, Stanford, California, the Sorbonne, the American College of Paris, King's College of London, Oxford, Tel Aviv University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University of Georgia, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and the American College of Greece. He lives with his wife, poet and playwright Rochelle Owens in Philadelphia and Wellfleet, Massachusetts. WEBSITE: georgeeconomou.org
	Deborah Emmanuel is a Singaporean writer, performer and three-time TEDx speaker whose work and dialogue has featured at The Singapore Writer's Festival, Bali Emerging Writers Festival and the Queensland Poetry Festival. Her first collection, When I Giggle In My Sleep, was published by Red Wheelbarrow Books early 2015. Her next book, Rebel Rites, will launch in March 2016. Deborah's theatre and television work has been with companies like TheatreWorks, Disney and Mediacorp Singapore. Occasionally she is still comfortable with being a tool for other artists to tell their stories (since acting is fun), but mostly she wants to create original work that discusses whatever issue is bursting from her insides.
	Nikos Engonopoulos (1903-1985) was a Surrealist poet and painter. His poetry was unique in style and language and mixed Byzantine themes with European ones. He wrote the poetry collections: Do not Talk to the Driver, The Clavicembalos of Silence, Eleusis, The Return of the Birds, Bolivar, The Atlantic, In the Flourishing of Greek Language, The Valley with the Rose-Trees.
	Dan Encarnacion lives in Portland, Oregon. Dan has work forthcoming in Eleven Eleven, cream city review and Upstairs at Duroc. He has recently been published in New American Writing, The Southern Review, The Blue Mesa Review, Assaracus, Blackbox Manifold and The Los Angeles Review.