Contributors

Wisdom Amouzou (he/him) graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a BA in communications and a certificate in leadership studies. After college, Wisdom joined Teach for America and was awarded the 2015 Sue Lehmann Teaching & Learning Award. In 2016, Wisdom cofounded the HadaNõu Collective while working as a diversity & equity fellow with RISE Colorado to design equity workshops for students, families, and educators. He was a 2017 Camelback Ventures fellow and winner of the 2017 TFA Social Innovation Award. Wisdom currently serves as executive director of Empower Community High School, an innovative student-led high school grounded in Transformative Resistance, in Aurora, Colorado. His life goal is to infuse an African spirit and love ethic into all he does.

Gio Barabadze (he/him) is multi-instrumental, playing piano, guitar, accordion, oboe, harmonica, bass guitar, ukulele, hand drums, and various folk instruments, including wooden flutes and the panduri. He started playing music at the age of six. Born and raised in Tbilisi, Georgia (the country, not the state), Gio attended a children's program at a local conservatory, where he studied classical piano and oboe. At the age of thirteen, he moved to the United States, where he picked up the guitar and a few other instruments and began singing, later continuing his musical education with jazz studies. As an adult, Gio has performed with various bands and as a solo musician. Currently, he writes and performs folk songs, plays instrumental sets consisting of classical and jazz music, and is a member of the band So It Goes.

Stephen Brackett (he/him) was born and raised in Denver, Colorado, where he regularly interfaces between music and the arts, the education sector, and grassroots movements. He currently serves as the music ambassador of Colorado. A member of the experimental rap-rock band Flobots, Stephen also cofounded the NOENEMIES project and Youth On Record. NOENEMIES works within communities to explore the power of protest music, and Youth On Record hosts a state-of-the-art youth media studio that provides teens in some of Denver’s most vulnerable communities with music programs, for-credit classes, and more. Stephen finds bliss in tricksterism, giant toppling, spitting hot fire, and clawhammer banjo. He is constantly provoked by Ephesians 6:12.

Gregg Deal (he/him) is a member of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe and a provocative contemporary artist. Much of his work—paintings, mural work, performance art, filmmaking, and spoken word—deals with Indigenous identity and pop culture. Gregg critically examines issues such as race, stereotypes, decolonization, appropriation, and the representation of Indigenous people in the context of Western culture. He has been heavily involved with the media activist movement #changethename in response to the sports mascot debate. Gregg was the Native Arts artist-in-residence at the Denver Art Museum from 2015 to 2016 and an artist-in-residence at the University of California, Berkeley from 2017 to 2018. He has lectured at prominent institutions, including Dartmouth College, Columbia University, the University of Colorado at Boulder, the Denver Art Museum, and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. His television appearances include Arts District (PBS), The Daily Show, and Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell. Find out more at greggdeal.com.

Asia Dorsey (she/her; they/them) embraces the earth. Ear to the soil, she heeds the instruction of mineral, microbial, and botanical beings. She uses her gift of pattern recognition as a bioregional herbalist with the Ancestral Herbalism Healing Collective and as a permaculture instructor with the Denver Permaculture Guild. She is also a developer of vibrant organizations that perpetuate cultures of reciprocity, including Regenerate Change and the Center for Community Wealth Building. Ever the Afrofuturist, Asia creates literary beauty and centers Black joy, embodied empowerment, and imagination as cofounder of the Palm Wine Collective and the Satya Yoga Cooperative for POC, and through her work with Seeds of Power Unity Farm. You can find her swimming bone-deep in soil, bending botanical chaos long enough for her people to rise together in power and step into the wholeness that is their birthright. Join in and support her creations on Patreon and Instagram and at www.bonesbugsandbotany.com.

Cory Feder (she/her) is an animator, comics illustrator, sculptor, tattoo artist, and musician. She grew up in Denver on occupied land of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Ute nations and now resides in Taos on land of the Apache, Pueblo, and Ute nations. She earned a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2014. Raised by a mother from South Korea and a father from the Bronx, Cory explores “the magic hidden in the mundane” to create a borderless dialogue about her experience existing between two worlds. Cory’s artwork draws on personal storytelling and makes connections between the past, present, and future. She has exhibited and screened her work at galleries and animation festivals in Denver, Chicago, New York, Mexico City, Athens, and Shanghai. Find out more at coreyfeder.com.

Anthony Garcia, Sr. (he/him) is a multimedia artist, born and raised in the Globeville neighborhood of Denver. His work runs the gamut from modern-contemporary, to mixed media, to urban art murals, to arts education. In 2001, Anthony was accepted to the Arts Street program. He received his artistic training through the Metro State University Center for Visual Arts. In 2003, he began teaching fine art to Denver youth. Over the years, Anthony has mentored many young graffiti artists, giving them outlets to produce art in a positive way. In 2008, he founded Birdseed Collective, providing a platform for artists to showcase their works and bringing art to underserved communities through programs that emphasize creativity and healthy living. As executive director of Birdseed, Anthony manages the Globeville Center, Alto Gallery, and Zarape Studios. He is committed to creating economic opportunities for Denver artists and residents. Find more of Anthony's work on Instagram.

Cory Minkah Montalvo (he/him) arrived on Earth from Neptune in the terrestrial year of 1984. Since then, he has reimagined and designed learning spaces of the future with local communities. He is the founder and chief plug of the Youth Empowerment Broadcasting Organization (YEBO). His career in education includes time teaching in Colombia, as well as in South Africa, where he traveled in 2014 on a Fulbright Scholarship. Cory is a self-described sci-fi nerd who loves to write. He plans to depart from this world upon the completion of his space elevator. He believes the children of Earth hold magic; they remind him of comets.

Bryánne E. Mitchell-Gonzales (she/her) is a writer and speaker whose work explores social issues of injustice in relation to American pop culture and music. In 2019, she and her husband formed Color Coded Media Group, a multimedia publishing house that focuses on amplifying the stories of diverse cultural identities. She is a passionate social commentator and makes it her mission to engage with detractors. Bryánne is a student of music, coming from a family where music is the language of their dynamic culture. A mother and a wife, Bryánne developed a homelife-based, take-action approach to her career trajectory years before social distancing and quarantine became the norm. If you like bold takes and know what it's like to go through caffeine withdrawal, follow her on Twitter.

Kai Lee Mykels (she/her), a.k.a. the #goodchristianwoman, is a drag entertainer in and around Denver. She is a stand-up comedian, emcee, lip-sync assassin, ordained minister, live singer, and music conductor. Kai Lee was the first drag entertainer to perform on the Red Rocks Amphitheatre stage (2017) and on the front steps of the Texas State Capitol (2012). She has preached in drag at Columbine Universal Universalist Church and House for All Sinners and Saints; she serves as the artistic director of Out Loud Colorado Springs Men's Chorus; and she is on the board of directors for We Are Family, a Denver-based nonprofit that assists queers in financial need. Before quarantine, Kai Lee hosted Queer Church, Sunday night shows at X Bar. You can always find her on Instagram and Facebook.

Shelsea Ochoa (she/her) has brought her performance and facilitation skills to twenty-eight different countries on four continents, with workshops, travel experiences, seminars, and performance art as her modes of expression. She has performed with the international service organization Up With People, and she has mentored students through organizations such as US-Brazil Connect and NY Help for Honduras. Shelsea brings a unique background in intercultural communications to the environmentalist world; she has worked on the education team with the San Diego River Park Foundation; and she currently works as an educator-performer at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. She is also the creative director of Soul Stories, producing dialogue and storytelling events centered on the human experience, and she performs in Denver with Playback Theatre West.

Kim Shively (she/her) is a filmmaker whose projects are largely interested in exploring representations of landscape, nature, and mortality. Much of her work originates with the idea of the palimpsest—a surface or place on which texts, ideas, and histories are continually being created and erased. The traces left behind are where Kim’s work begins. She is also a compulsive documenter; her own archive often functions as inspiration and as material for future projects. Kim has been a frequent collaborator with M12, a Colorado-based art collective, and her work has been screened at many festivals, including the Chicago International Film Festival, L'Etrange Festival (Paris), and SXSW. Find more of Kim's work at her website.

Dujie Tahat (he/him; they/them) is a Filipino-Jordanian immigrant living in Washington State. He is the author of Here I Am O My God, selected by Fady Joudah for a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship, and Salat, selected by Cornelius Eady as the winner of the Tupelo Press Sunken Garden Chapbook Award. Their poems have been published or are forthcoming in POETRY, Poetry NW, ZYZZVA, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. Dujie has earned fellowships from Hugo House, the Jack Straw Writing Program, and the Poetry Foundation, and a work-study scholarship from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Along with Gabrielle Bates and Luther Hughes, he cohosts The Poet Salon podcast, and you can also find him on Twitter. Find more of Dujie's work at his website.

Tania Chairez (she/her) is an undocumented immigrant born in Chihuahua, Mexico and raised in Phoenix, Arizona. She received a BS from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and an EdM from Grand Canyon University. For the past decade, Tania has prioritized her passion for the intersection of immigration and education. Watch her TEDx talk on being Undocumented and Unafraid; share her journey in the local documentary Five Dreamers; and uplift her nonprofit for immigrant youth, Convivir Colorado. She is the national outreach & education director for Motus Theater and a monologist in their Shoebox Stories UndocuAmerica Series. You can listen to Tania's monologue read by Maria Hinojosa (lead anchor and executive producer of Latino USA and founder of the Futuro Media Group) on Motus’ Shoebox Stories Podcast.

Alejandro Fuentes-Mena (he/him) is a Motus Theater UndocuAmerica monologist. He was born in Valparaiso, Chile, immigrated to the United States at the age of four, and grew up in San Diego, California. He received a BA in psychology from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. Through Teach for America, Alejandro became one of the first two DACAmented teachers in the entire nation. He recently completed his seventh year of teaching in northeast Denver and will be moving on to get his master’s degree in educational leadership in hopes of creating an arts integrated school, to be named the Radical Arts Academy of Denver (RAAD).

Kirsten Wilson (she/her) is the founder and artistic director of Motus Theater. She is a narrative artist, editor, and master teacher in the field of autobiographical monologue work. She has won multiple regional awards for leadership, as well as for her artistic works. She has received funds and commissions from the National Endowment for the Arts for numerous projects, and her work has been featured in media as diverse as Theater Magazine, NPR, Fast Company Magazine, Ms. Magazine, and USA Today.