reg e gaines is a two time Tony Award nominated playwright and Grammy Award nominated lyricist.
He has published four books of poetry, is editor of the 2015 poetry anthology, ‘A Year in Ink’, scored the PBS documentary, ‘Senior Year’, and has served as artistic director of the NYC Downtown Urban Arts Festival since 2007. Recent projects include, director of Connect The Lots, a musical theater summer camp in Camden, New Jersey in 2014, director/creative writing workshop facilitator of Through The Looking Glass, Center Theater Group, Los Angeles California, 2014-2016, director of Lyricist Fellowship Lab, Teaching Firm of America Charter School, Bedford Stuyvesant Brooklyn, winter/spring 2017, Is Poetry Theater? workshop facilitator, bowery Poetry Club, NYC 2018 and writer, director, produce, ‘The 88’, a new musical with music by Calvin Gaines, 2020.
Angela Kariotis, winner of the 2018 Award of Excellence from the NJ Theater Alliance for Arts Education, couples her masterful performances with cutting-edge residency work.
Kariotis is committed to literacy through the arts, theater for social justice, and art-making as a liberatory practice. As an extension of her activist work, Angela’s creative works provoke thought and entertain, while aimed at cultivating social change. To learn more about the artist, visit her website.
Lisa Coll Nicolaou is a lifelong educator. She was a recipient of a Scholastic Art and Writing Teaching Award and was named to the Educator Advisory Panel.
In addition, Lisa received a Dodge Teaching Award and was twice named Teacher of the Year. Nicolaou’s prose and poetry have been published in a variety of magazines and literary journals. In 2016 she shared first prize in the Allen Ginsberg Contest. For the past three years, Lisa has served as a visiting poet in the schools in Paterson, NJ. She tries to inspire her students to realize that they all have stories to tell.