Cynthia Amoah
Creative Writing, Poetry & Spoken Word
Cynthia Amoah is a spoken word artist, educator, and mentor originally from Ghana. Since the onset of her career, Cynthia’s dynamic voice has captured diverse audiences and her authentic stage presence has left them inspired after every performance. Her literary pieces often highlight the forgotten stories of the world, while transcending the oftentimes marginalized groups she delineates in her work. Her writing and performances also concern the foraging questions that have to do with identity and belonging, with displacement, migration and uprootedness.
Cynthia completed her MFA at The New School and has been featured on the stages of TEDxDrewUniversity, TEDxOhioStateUniversity, and the United Nations Information Center in Accra, among many.…
Mimi Brodsky Chenfeld
Integrated Arts Experiences
Born and raised in New York City, Mimi Brodsky Chenfeld has been teaching people of all ages and backgrounds for her whole teaching life—through programs such as Headstart and Upward Bound—from early childhood programs to senior communities, from prisons to hospitals, elementary schools, high schools, and higher education institutions. She has presented programs in creative education in 45 states, Puerto Rico, Canada, and Great Britain. She has written numerous poems, stories, articles, and books. Her children’s novel, The House At 12 Rose Street, was adapted for a TV special and nominated for an Emmy.…
Jennifer Hambrick
Poetry
Poet Jennifer Hambrick is the four-time Pushcart Prize- and Best of the Net-nominated author of the free verse poetry collection In the High Weeds, winner of the Stevens Manuscript Award of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies; the acclaimed haibun collection Joyride (Red Moon Press), winner of the Marianne Bluger Book Award from Haiku Canada; and the free verse poetry collection Unscathed (NightBallet Press). Jennifer also won the 2020 Sheila-Na-Gig Press Poetry Prize, First Place in the 2018 Haibun Award Competition of the Haiku Society of America, and First Place in the 2021 Martin Lucas Haiku Award Competition (U.K.); was featured by former U.S.…
Nancy Kangas
Poetry
Nancy Kangas is a poet, filmmaker, and teaching artist based in Columbus, who often combines written and spoken word with other media. In the 1980s and 90s, she edited Nancy’s Magazine, an intimate mix of poetry, comics, and advice; the full run of this zine was recently selected to be archived in the Rare Books & Manuscripts Library of The Ohio State University. She’s written and performed poetry-theater pieces, including a selection for the Cincinnati Fringe Festival, and paired family slides with flash fiction for the online magazine, Ohio Edit.…
Sierra Leone
Entrepreneur, Poet, Wholistic Urban Creative Arts & Theatre
Poet, producer, activist, educator, and entrepreneur Sierra Leone captivates audiences with her unassuming ingenuity, profound insight, and comedic sense of “knowing.”
A Governor’s Award winner and writer, Sierra is the president and artistic director of OFP Theatre and Production Company. For more than a decade, Ohio has benefited from Sierra’s vision of creative urban arts as a powerful artistic medium to bring communities together across racial, cultural, ideological, and economic divides. Her project “The Signature: A Poetic Medley Show” presents a hybrid of urban poetry, music, dance, and visual arts from local, regional, and international talent.…
Andrea Belser McCormick
Musical Theater, Dance/Movement, & Acting
Andrea McCormick is a performing artist and instructor from Cleveland, Ohio who has received her Bachelor of Arts from Wright State University in Theatre Studies, with an emphasis on Dance and Applied Voice. Beginning with ballet at three years of age, she also continued her studies in various dance forms, including tap, African folk dance, liturgical/spiritual, jazz, musical theatre dance, modern/contemporary, hip hop, and Latin ballroom.
Post college, under the stage name “Andrea Belser”, Andrea has remained extremely active in the northeast Ohio theater community, receiving 2008 Best Actress in Cleveland for her role as Juliette in “I Have Before Me a Remarkable Document Given to Me by a Young Lady from Rwanda” at Dobama Theatre, and nomination as 2012 Best Actress in Cleveland for her role as Pecola in “The Bluest Eye” at Karamu House Theatre.…
Ray McNiece
Theatre, Performance Poetry & Storytelling
Ray McNiece is the author of eight books of poems and monologues, most recently Breath Burns Away, New Haiku. He has created two solo theatre works: Dis – Voices From a Shelter and Us? Talking Across America; two music/poetry collaborations: “Mouth Music” and “A Rust bowl Hootenanny;” and an autobiography on stage: The Lives of A Poet. The Orlando Sentinel reporting on Ray’s solo show at the Fringe Festival called him “a modern day descendant of Woody Guthrie. He has a way with words and a wry sense of humor.” In a review of Us?…
Suzanne Ondrus
Creative Writing, Poetry
Suzanne Ondrus’ work explores cultures, identity, history, gender issues, racism, and women’s sexuality. Her first book, Passion Seeds, won the 2013 Vernice Quebodeaux Pathways Poetry Prize for Women, and its contest judge, Richard Harteis, in an introduction to the book writes: “These poems speak to both what we want to keep invisible, such as shame and racism and speak to what we want visible, desire and love. … Ondrus taps into both the dream world and reality so that the invisible becomes visible and audible.”
Changes: Suzanne was the 2013 Reed Magazine Markham Poetry Prize winner, a 2017 UNESCO World Book Capital featured poet in Guinea, Conakry, a 2018-2020 Fulbright Scholar to Burkina Faso, West Africa, and will be a 2022-2023 English Language Fellow to Nigeria.…
Brianna Rhodes
Dance/Movement, Visual Poetry, Modern, West African, Afrobeats, & Hip Hop
Brianna Rhodes is an Ohio native and graduate of The Ohio State University Department of Dance. She formally danced as a fellow with Dayton Contemporary Dance Company. Currently, she is working with Dianne McIntyre and serving as a freelance dancer and dance teacher. Her talents span concert, street, and commercial dance. Primarily, she works with the youth teaching dance, along with dance history, in many corners of Columbus, Ohio. Her professional career has allowed her to perform at the Bermuda Dance Festival, in a Brazil tour group, and at City Center in New York.…
Rikki Santer
Creative Writing, Poetry, & Film Studies
Rikki Santer has worked as a journalist, magazine and book editor, co-founder and managing editor of an alternative city newspaper in Cleveland, poet-in-the schools, high school teacher of English and film studies, and director of a student writing center. Currently she is serving as a vice-president of the Ohio Poetry Association, education consultant for Film Columbus, member of the performing poetry troupe, Concrete Wink, and she holds an Ohio Department of Education Lead Professional Educator teaching license as well as National Board teacher certification.
She earned a MA degree in journalism from Kent State University and a MFA degree in creative writing from The Ohio State University.…
