STEM Advocate, Speaker, Mentor, & Author

www.likemebook.com

www.qwoodard.com

Quinn Woodard is a STEM advocate, mentor, author, and speaker. At an early age, he showed an aptitude for math. However, it wasn’t until high school that he had his first exposure into STEM careers through Project Lead The Way. After completing the program, he leveraged his newly developed appreciation for STEM to pursue an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Tulsa. It was while completing his engineering degree, that he realized there weren’t many individuals who looked like him in STEM. Through his involvement with serving on curriculum advisory committees, mentoring students, and his own personal experience, Quinn realized that early exposure to STEM is critical for minority students. With his book, Like Me, he hopes to provide that early exposure and provide a brief history lesson of those who came before.

https://www.lifeartsinc.org/

LIFE Arts is an extension and outgrowth of the many experiences that have been granted to me over the years. Since the events of Ferguson in 2014, we have been dedicated to developing the youth of our community and providing them with a platform wherein they can fully express and develop their creative voice. We believe that the youth of today have a vital leadership role in helping to bring resolution to the current issues of our city and nation. We also believe and are committed to ensuring that the youth that reside within our immediate community, which we define as our reasonable radius of reach, or the 8 mile radius form the epicenter of Ferguson; ensure that they have all of the necessary resources, infrastructure and experiences in their community and accessible to them.

BRIAN OWENS | EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Photo Journalist

https://www.bizelliphotography.com/

https://lastdayonachain.com/

Mike Bizelli grew up with photography. His parents operated Bizelli Studio in St. Charles for almost 45 years. Mike graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism majoring in photojournalism. His 48-year photography career has included an 18-year stint as a staff photographer at the Ralston Purina Company (now Nestle Purina).

In 1995 Mike started his own business, Bizelli Photography, Inc., where his client list included Fortune 500 companies, small businesses and non-profits. He started documenting animal rescues for the Humane Society of Missouri in the fall of 1999 and the ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) in the spring of 2009. To date Mike has documented 106 companion animal rescues. Ten of those rescues have been for victims of dog fighting. He followed many of these rescued fight dogs into rehabilitation and on to forever homes. This inspired him to publish Last Day on a Chain, Stories of Compassion, Salvation and Misperceptions.

Novelist

joshuaajohnston.com

You might say that I have a few writing interests.

Chief among them is science fiction. That passion took root in childhood when my dad introduced me to the sci-fi of television and film: Star Trek and Star Wars. In adolescence, my mother (who had no interest in science fiction at all) began taking us regularly to the library, and it was there that I would discover, on my own, the fathomless domain of science fiction literature. Among my earliest reads were Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, and Heinlein’s Tunnel in the Sky. I like speculative fiction of all types, but I have a soft spot for well-paced space opera. It took me a while to find my own sci-fi voice, but I’m glad I did.

I also write a fair amount of nonfiction. I’ve dabbled in blogging going back to the pre-social media days of Xanga, and I still ruminate right here. I’m the Editor-in-Chief of the Aldi review blog Aldi Reviewer, which deals with Aldi product reviews, news, and features. I’ve been a writer and onetime senior editor for Nintendojo, a site devoted to Nintendo news, reviews, and editorials. (I still regret turning down that all-expenses-paid trip to fly out to California to demo Guitar Hero.) And I’ve been known to be an occasional guest columnist for the parenting blog Mumbling Mommmy.

By day, I teach American history and American government.

http://www.saharasistasols.com/

Sahara Sista S.O.L.S can be caught spinning stories into her poems, performing one woman shows, and performing in plays. Sahara self-published My Last Words... Not Really, a collection of plays and poetry in 2016. Her words have appeared in Enclave, WusGood, Poetry Potion, and F.A.C.E.S Magazine. She frequently performs her One Woman Show "The Family Cookbook" that has toured nationally. She has written and directed, "The Gifts", "Not About Love", and collaborative works with Room 13 Delmar for St. Louis Shakespeare Festival's Shake 38. Sahara was the first Katherine Dunham Fellow at COCA. She was on the Artist of Color Council for the Great Rivers Greenway 2019-2020. Currently, she is a Young Adult Services Specialist at the St. Louis Public Library where she holds poetry workshops for teens. She is a member of the UrbArts Collective and a teaching artist for UrbArts that facilitates workshops on performance and poetry. She co-coached the Youth St. Louis Poetry Slam Team of 2019 as they took 1st place at Brave New Voices. She is also the co-slam master of the St. Louis Poetry Slam Team 2020.

http://www.fredventurini.com

Fred Venturini has eleven scars from eleven separate

incidents, the most interesting of which is the time he was

set on fire.

For the others, just ask. His short fiction has been featured in the Booked. Anthology and Chuck Palahniuk's Burnt Tongues anthology. He is the acclaimed author of The Heart Does Not Grow Back and The Escape of Light.

On the basketball court, he is a three-point specialist and defensive liability. He lives in Southern Illinois with his wife and daughter.

Email him personally at venterminator@gmail.com

Liz Miller is the Managing Editor of the Riverfront Times, or RFT, in St. Louis. Liz joined the Riverfront Times last September after more than six years as editor of Feast Magazine, a monthly Midwest culinary magazine based in St. Louis. At the RFT, Liz now leads the alt-weekly’s dining and beverage coverage and enjoys writing and editing stories for the paper’s news, arts and music departments as well. Her feature writing has won awards and nominations from the Association of Food Journalists, Folio Magazine and the Great Plains Journalism Awards. In 2015 she was honored with a "30 Under 30" award by Folio, a national leader in magazine and digital publishing, alongside 29 other reporters and editors across the country. In the past decade, Liz has written hundreds of profiles of people and projects impacting St. Louis for better or worse, and sharing those stories with readers is what inspires her work every day.