Poets and Scholars Summer Writing Retreat 2022

Michelle Stephens is the Founding Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice. She joined the Department of English and the Department of Latino and Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University–New Brunswick in spring 2011. She is a psychoanalyst and served as the dean of the humanities in the School of Arts and Sciences from 2017–2020. Originally from Jamaica, West Indies, she graduated from Yale University with a Ph.D. in American studies. 

Enobong (Anna) Branch is the senior vice president for equity at Rutgers University and provides strategic leadership to ensure that the institutional commitment to equity is reflected in the research, educational, and public engagement efforts that occur throughout the university and the focus extends to faculty, staff, and students. She leads the University and Inclusion office and the Division of Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Engagement on the New Brunswick campus.

Kimberly Mutcherson is an award-winning professor whose scholarship focuses on reproductive justice, bioethics, and family and health law. She has presented her scholarship nationally and internationally and publishes extensively on assisted reproduction, families, and the law. She was a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics and the Columbia Law School Center for Gender and Sexuality Law.

Dr. Jessica R. Calvanico is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice in the Department of Childhood Studies at Rutgers University. She completed her Ph.D. at University of California, Santa Cruz in the Feminist Studies Department, with designated emphasis in Visual Studies and Critical Race & Ethnic Studies. As an interdisciplinary scholar, Dr. Calvanico's research considers histories of girlhood in the U.S. and the establishment of the juvenile justice system. 

Keith Green is the Associate Professor of English and Director of the Africana Studies Program at Rutgers–Camden. His research and teaching interests include African American literature, Afro-Cuban culture, 19th-century American literature, autobiography, narratives of black captivity, speculative fiction and disability studies.

Tala Khanmalek is a writer, activist, educator, and oral historian. She publishes creative and academic prose and frequently co-authors work in both genres with Heidi Rhodes. She was a 2020 Voices of Our Nations Arts fellow, 2021 Anaphora Arts fellow, and 2022 Periplus Fellowship finalist. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Meridian, Indiana Review, Barzakh, Frontiers, Feminist Studies, Latino Studies, and more. 

Suzanne A. Kim is Professor of Law and Judge Denny Chin Scholar at Rutgers Law School.. Her research and teaching focus on inequality, family, gender, antidiscrimination, procedure, constitutional law, and access to justice at the intersections of law, critical theory, and social sciences. She is founding director of the Rutgers Center for Gender, Sexuality, Law, & Policy.

Jenna Le is the author of three poetry collections: Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011), A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Indolent Books, 2017), and Manatee Lagoon (forthcoming from Acre Books, October 2022). Her poems have appeared in such journals as AGNI, Denver Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Pleiades, Poet Lore, Verse Daily, and West Branch. 

Ruth Madievsky is the author of a poetry collection, "Emergency Brake" (Tavern Books, 2016), and a forthcoming novel, "All-Night Pharmacy" (Catapult, 2023). Her writing appears or is forthcoming in Harper's Bazaar, The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. Originally from Moldova, she lives in Los Angeles, where she works as an HIV and primary care clinical pharmacist. 

Originally from Bali, Indonesia, Cynthia Dewi Oka is the author of Fire Is Not a Country (2021) and Salvage (2017) from Northwestern University Press, and Nomad of Salt and Hard Water (2016) from Thread Makes Blanket Press. A recipient of the Amy Clampitt Residency, Tupelo Quarterly Poetry Prize, and the Leeway Transformation Award, her writing appears in The Atlantic, POETRY, Academy of American Poets, Poetry Society of America, Hyperallergic, Guernica, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. 

Heidi Andrea Restrepo Rhodes is a queer, brown/Colombian, disabled poet, scholar, and educator, and holds a Ph.D. in political theory from the City University of New York’s Graduate Center (CUNY). Her research focuses on histories of violence, feminist thought, decolonial politics and aesthetics, queer-of-color disability thought, and alternative epistemologies. 

Linda Villarosa is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine where she covers the intersection of race, inequality and public health. Her new book, Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation, was published in June by Doubleday. She is also a professor at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism @ CUNY with a joint appointment at the City College of New York and a contributor to the 1619 Project. 

Jean-Jacques Gabriel is a Haitian born father, artist, yoga teacher, yoga teacher trainer, and bodyworker. He’s been teaching yoga since 2006, practicing Thai Massage since 2007, and teaching AcroYoga since 2008. He has taught in prisons, public schools, nonprofits, businesses, yoga studios, and large festivals. jean-jacques draws and paints portraits and line art, and co-designed a clothing line called “The Embodied Collection” with Philadelphia Printworks. 

Dagmawe Berhanu is a poet and student from Philadelphia, PA. An advocate in the death rights movement, most of their work reflects on the effects of grief and loss as it pertains to the Black experience. In 2018, along with their team, they competed at the National Poetry Slam representing the city of Philadelphia. When they aren’t writing, Dag enjoys getting the chance to utilize their body through exercise, watching obscure films, and entertaining their 9 year old dog daughter, Miss Ruby. 

Noa Coffey-Moore (they/them) is a Black, genderfluid, disabled, writer, organizer, educator, folk-rock musician, and radical peer support coach living in West Philadelphia. They are a multimedia artist, shapeshifter, time traveler, and chronic pain survivor. They studied creative writing and social justice education, and devised theater at Hampshire College. Trained in poetry and creative nonfiction, their work investigates magic, disability, multi-racial identity, gender and more.

Darcy Grabenstein supports the initiatives of Citeline (formerly Informa Pharma Intelligence) by crafting content on topics ranging from clinical trial disclosure to patient engagement and recruitment. She has served as a judge for industry awards including the WEGO Health Awards and the eHealthcare Leadership Awards. 

Mick Powell (she/her) is a queer Black femme poet and an Assistant Professor in Residence at the University of Connecticut in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Frontier Poetry, Voicemail Poems, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. mick's chapbook, chronicle the body, won Yemassee Journal's second Annual Chapbook Contest and was published in March 2019.

Alyssa Ripley is a poet and teacher from the Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri now living in Philadelphia She has her MFA in poetry from Rutgers University-Camden. When she’s not writing about the waters of Missouri and largemouth bass, she’s playing rec basketball or exploring Philadelphia with her fiancé. Her work has been featured, or is forthcoming, in Chicago Quarterly Review, DIALOGIST, the Arkansas International, and Crab Creek Review.

Cándida Rosa Rodríguez was born in Brooklyn, N.Y, and was raised both in Cayey, Puerto Rico and Camden, New Jersey. She has wandered from Brooklyn to Philadelphia and back to Camden; and it is there that her heart remains. She is also a visual artist exploring mixed media and a lover of mail art/postcard exchanges. She enjoys amateur photography and is a die-hard Star Trek fan. Her passion is in writing fantasy and science fiction but has found a home in the lyricism of poetry and is a happy member of Brigid’s Writers House in Camden.

Nikeisha S Shaw-Paynter is a poet, birth-worker, and social worker. Nikeisha practices holistic health and uses creative means such as writing, poetry, and herbal creations to bring healing.  Nikeisha has been an avid reader and writer her entire life and has used writing as a way to connect with the world and to understand the meaning of everything going on around her. Nikeisha is passionate about bringing awareness to maternal mental health and postpartum health for Black women.

Lauren Silver is Associate Professor of Childhood Studies at Rutgers University-Camden. Lauren was an inaugural Faculty Fellow with ISGRJ (2021-2022). She is a feminist ethnographer whose work lies at the intersection of critical & transformative youth studies, abolition, and queer kinship. Her scholarship centers the counternarratives and visions of Black, brown, and queer young people who resist the enclosures of structural & intimate violence, white supremacy, and other forms of oppression.

Amy Beth Sisson is struggling to emerge, toad-like, from the mud outside of Philly. Her poetry has appeared in Cleaver Magazine, The Night Heron Barks, and Ran Off  With the Star Bassoon and is upcoming in The River Heron Review and The Shoutflower. Her last day job was in software development. She told programmers what business people wanted and business people why they couldn't quite have it.