My Word Open Mic Presents: Bridge and Verse is curated by Kelliane Parker.

Kelliane Parker is a queer, Latinx poet that co-hosts My Word open mic. She is a frequent Bay Area feature and has been published in zines and anthologies. Her first chapbook, Down the Foggy Streets of My Mind, is due to be launched in February with Nomadic Press.

Mary Susan Gast is a poet, theologian, human rights advocate, and musician. As she ages, she finds it increasingly difficult and immaterial to differentiate among those identities.

She lived her first 18 years on a small farm outside the tiny town of Baroda, Michigan, then took off on adventures unforeseen by anyone, including herself. Sites and circumstances for intense education have been Zambia, Samoa, Russia, China, South Africa, Washington, D.C., and the piney woods of Mississippi. In her many incarnations as assembly line worker, community organizer, pastor, non-profit executive director, and bishop, she has always written.

Mary Susan is Benicia’s current Poet Laureate—8^th in the line.

Sylvia L. Blalock, aka DarkJoyChyld was born in San Francisco, California and currently resides in Concord,CA. She is the author of “Uprising-a book of poetry” and the owner operator of Uprising Radio (www.uprising-radio.com). There, she hosts “Poetry In the Raw”, an online poetry show that features spoken word artists and poets from across the country. Sylvia was a performer in BPC Poetryfest 2017 in Myrtle Beach, SC. Sylvia is a workshop presenter at the UC Berkeley 36^th Empowering Womxn of Color Conference- her workshop is “Voices That Carry-Being Loud On Purpose”. She is the CEO/Founder of Queendom Network (www.queendom.network) and is proudly hosting “Voices That Carry” Conference in September 2021.

Tony Aldarondo has performed music and poetry in venues throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, overseas and once while standing up on a Jet Blue airplane! He is also a theater and film actor and voice-over artist. But most of all he wants to be known as a great dad.

Georgina Marie is a poet from Lakeport, Northern California and the Lake County Poet Laureate for 2020-2024; the first Mexican-American and youngest to serve in this role for the county. In June 2021, she was selected as a Poets Laureate Fellow with the Academy of American Poets. She is the Literary Coordinator and Poetry Out Loud Coordinator for the Lake County Arts Council, co-creator of the The Bloom's poetry column, and Poet in Residence for The Bloom. She has served as co-editor for the Middletown Art Center’s RESILIENCE and RESTORE collections of written word, funded by the California Arts Council. As part of the Broken Nose Collective, an annual chapbook exchange, she created her first poetry chapbook Finding the Roots of Water in 2018 and her second chapbook Tree Speak in 2019. In 2020, she was an Anne G. Locasio scholar for the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference and is now a member of their Board of Directors. Most recently, she was a Brereton scholar for the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference. She is currently working on her full-length poetry manuscript.

Taneesh is a writer, painter, and educator of East Indian descent, based in the SF Bay Area. She is a social justice advocate who uses poetry and nature to understand and dismantle systems of physical and mental oppression. Se habla español.

Myra is 16 years old and a junior at Oakland High School where she is on the Latino Honor Roll, and participates in many school clubs and college prep programs. She is a shy person and believes her poetry is a form of self-expression. She has been writing poetry since sixth grade when she won her first poetry contest and felt strong reading her poem. She felt as if what she was saying mattered and resonated with people.