POETS

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SIMBA ALIK (he/him), formerly Simba The Poet, is a Nashville based spoken word artist and communications wizard. He is most known for his contribution to the movement for Black and trans lives through his poetry. Simba is a storyteller, compulsive collaborator, and relationship builder invested in shifting cultures in the direction of justice and equity. Simba has a B.S. in Journalism and Sociology, a Masters in Organizational Leadership, and is pursuing a M.S. in Public Relations.

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RACHEL EBIO (she/her) is a Poet and Writer from Birmingham, Alabama living in Nashville, Tennessee. Educated at The University of Alabama, Rachel stretches her Bachelors of Science in Business degree to its limits. Energized by art, fashion and spirituality, she explores writing poetry and fiction through feminine forms.  Rachel is a 2021-2022 Art Wire Fellow through OZ Arts Nashville and The Porch Tennessee. She is a perpetual student through education opportunities from The Porch writing workshops to her second non-credit fashion program from the Parsons School of Design.

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KASHIF ANDREW GRAHAM (he/him) is a writer, poet, and librarian. His work explores themes of loneliness, the Black body, Black queer love, and family. He served as an ArtWire Fellow from 2019-2020. His writing has been published in outlets such as Nashville Scene, Chapter16, Theological Librarianship, and Justice Unbound. He is currently at work on a novel about an interracial gay couple living in East Tennessee. He also uses typewriters to write poetry on themes of queerness, protest, and the quotidian on Instagram at @kagwrites.

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THEO HALL (they/them) has been doing graphic design for small businesses and nonprofits for 10 years, but their first love is storytelling. They love creating comics and other works that marry or blur the line between visual art and writing. They are a current ArtWire fellow for OZ Arts Nashville, and have done work for April Gloaming Press, Parnassus Books, Left Bank Artists, and The Porch, among others.

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CJ HOLIDAY (shey - she/they) (MGHOSTS- The Mother of Ghosts) is a Nashville native poet exploring disenfranchised grief and complex trauma in a genre and gender bending time loop of the haunting places we find ourselves in. Deeply inspired by Southern Gothic, midnight trains, and inner angst, their work represents a genderless, nonbinary, spirit not limited by physical ability, material possessions, gender, race, religion, or where they grew up. Ghosts hate tiny boxes. They tell the stories that society tries to bury. They exist at the crossroads of isolation and redemption, loss and rebirth. Holiday is a mental health advocate and volunteers for the nonprofits the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and Southern Word. Their writing has been featured in the 2020 Nashville Design Week and online at GypsysGraveyard.com. They are a fall 2021 cohort of the Arts Board Matching program of the Arts & Business Council of Greater Nashville.

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NORA MASTERS (they/she) is a poet and singer/songwriter from Nashville, TN. A recent graduate of the literary arts conservatory at Nashville School of the Arts, their writing often explores darker themes from a queer and/or feminist perspective. They’re 1/3 of folk rock band Eve’s Curse.

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TARIA PERSON (she/they) is an alum of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where they received a dual B. A. in English Creative Writing: Poetry, and Interdisciplinary Studies: Africana Studies. Person is the author of Rainbow Elephant, and was commissioned to write a book of poetry by the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation entitled, At the Summit. Person won an Artistic Professional Development grant from Alternative ROOTS in 2018 to produce their original LGBT stage play, Hangers, and they won an artistic grant in 2020 to produce their hip hop folk tale, Storm. They have also won multiple 1st place regional Spoken Word and Hip-Hop Slam Championship titles (2012 - 2017), performed at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival (2019), produced, and performed Hangers at the Arkansas Theatre Festival (2020), as well as performed with Knoxville Symphony Orchestra and The 5th Woman Poetry for Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (2021). Taria Person is an annual Young Writers' Workshop instructor for Humanities TN, works as a teaching artist for Turnip Green Creative Reuse, and is the Write with Pride Coordinator for Southern Word.

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AMIE WHITTEMORE (she/her) is the author of the poetry collections Glass Harvest (Autumn House Press), Star-tent: A Triptych (Tolsun Books, 2023), and Nest of Matches (Autumn House, 2024). She was the 2020-2021 Poet Laureate of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Her poems have won multiple awards and her poems and prose have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Nashville Review, Blackbird, and elsewhere. She teaches English at Middle Tennessee State University.

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