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Suheir Hammad is a poet, writer, and political activist whose most recent book, breaking poems, received the 2009 American Book Award and Arab American Book award for Poetry.  Her other books include ZaatarDiva, Born Palestinian, Born Black, and Drops of This Story.  Her work has been widely anthologized and adapted for theater.  Her produced plays include Blood Trinity and breaking letter(s), and she wrote the libretto for the multimedia performance Re-Orientalism.  She was an original cast member and co-writer for the TONY award-winning Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam.  She is the 2010 Artist-in-Residence at NYU’s Asian/Pacific/American Institute.

John Murillo is a poet and playwright whose first book, Up Jump the Boogie, was praised by Junot Diaz as “headbreakingly brilliant.” His poetry has appeared in such publications as Ploughshares, Callaloo, and Ninth Letter, and is forthcoming in Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of African-American Poetry.  His choreo-play, Trigger, is scheduled for production in spring 2011.  He has received fellowships from The New York Times, the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts.  A founding member of the poetry collective, The Symphony, he has taught at NYU, Columbia College Chicago, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Currently, he is a visiting assistant professor of creative writing at Cornell University.

Rachel McKibbens is the author of the poetry collection Pink Elephant.  Her poems have appeared in such publications as World Literature Today, The New York Quarterly, and Bowery Women: Poems.  She co-wrote the play-in-verse Eight Chamber Hunger Orchestra, which premiered in 2007.  She is the 2009 Women of the World poetry slam champion, an eight-time National Poetry Slam team member, and a 2007 New York Foundation for the Arts poetry fellow and Pushcart nominee.  A member and co-founder of the Right Coast Writers Brigade, she lives in upstate New York with her five children.

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Behind the Book is a literacy nonprofit working with low-income students in NYC public schools.  Our mission is to excite children and young adults about reading.  Working in the 1st -12th grades, we bring authors and their books into individual classrooms to build literacy skills and a new generation of book readers.  www.behindthebook.org