THE SUMMER RETREAT

Jessica Helen Lopez

Jessica Helen Lopez is the City of Albuquerque Poet Laureate, Emeritus (2014-2016), a NM Humanities Chautauqua Scholar, Rural Women’s Collective Fellow at Justice for Migrant Women and the Zia Book Award Recipient for her inaugural poetry collection, Always Messing With them Boys (West End Press). She is also the author of The Blood Poems (University of New Mexico Press), The Language of Bleeding, Provocateur and cunt. bomb.(Swimming With Elephants Publications). An Adjunct Instructor with the University of New Mexico Chicana and Chicano Studies Department, Lopez also teaches at the Native American Community Academy High School, and the Santa Fe Institute of American Indian Academy. A California born Chicana, Lopez resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A six-time member of the ABQ Champion Winning Slam Team and two-time champion of the ABQ Women of the World Poetry Slam, Lopez is a member of the Macondo Foundation, an association of socially-engaged writers working to advance creativity, foster generosity, and serve community which was founded in 1995 by Mexican-American writer Sandra Cisneros. Lopez was the John Trudell Featured Activist Poet awarded by the San Bernardino College and is the editor of the photo-poetic anthology, La Palabra: The Word is a Woman and Earthships: A New Mecca Poetry Collection. Her poetry, academic research and book reviews have been published widely both in print and online. Her forthcoming book, My Heart is a Pomegranate/Mi Corazón es Una Granada is set to be published by FlowerSong Press later this year. She is a single mama, Xingona, Jota, Pocha, lover of lime paletas and fierce little chihuahuas. Visit her at jessicahelenlopezpoet.wordpress.com

Dinah Johnson

Dinah Johnson loves the fact that she was born in the historic city of Charleston, South Carolina. Along with her parents (Douglas and Beatrice) and her siblings, she has lived in ten different states of the US and in Iran and Germany. There she met her favorite teacher ever. In her 6th grade class Dinah began writing poetry and she’s been writing ever since.

She graduated from Spring Valley High School in Columbia, S.C., went to college at Princeton University, and earned her Ph.D. at Yale University. She’s been teaching English at the University of South Carolina since 1990.

The most important thing about her life is being the mother of Niani Feelings, now performing in the national tour of Mean Girls. Niani is loving and joyful and smart and bold, like the young people Dinah loves meeting on school visits!

Stacey Rose

Stacey Rose is an award-winning playwright who transitioned to television by working on Fox’s 9-1-1 where she wrote for three seasons. Stacey hails from Elizabeth, NJ and Charlotte, NC. She holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU Tisch School of the Arts and a BA in Theatre from UNC Charlotte. While at Tisch, she was the recipient of an AAUW Career Development Grant, Future Screenwriting Fellowship, and The Goldberg Prize for her play THE DANGER: A HOMAGE TO STRANGE FRUIT. Stacey’s work celebrates and explores Blackness, Black identity, Black history, body politics, and the dilemma of life as the “other.” Her play LEGACY LAND, developed at The Playwrights’ Center, world premiered at Kansas City Rep in February 2020. AMERICA v. 2.1 and her play AS IS are featured on the 2019 Kilroys list. LEGACY LAND also made The List as an Honorable Mention. Stacey is a recipient of a 2019 Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation Women’s Commissioning Grant in partnership with Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre. Her work has been presented at UNC Charlotte, On Q Productions, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, The Fire This Time Festival, The Brooklyn Generator, The Bushwick Starr Reading Series, Mosaic Theatre, The Amoralists Theatre Company, Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, National Black Theatre, and Pillsbury House Theater. She was a 2018 Sundance Theatre Lab Fellow, 2017-18 Playwrights’ Center Many Voices Fellow, and 2015-16 Dramatist Guild Fellow.