Staff

Teaching Artists

Neelanjana Banerjee is a writer and editor whose poetry and fiction have appeared in the The Literary Review, Asian Pacific American Journal, Nimrod, A Room of One’s Own, and the anthology “Desilicious.” She received an MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State University in 2007 and was a Hedgebrook Fellow in 2008. She has worked in mainstream, ethnic and independent media for the past 10 years. She is co-editor of “Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry” (University of Arkansas Press, 2010).

Rick D’Elia is a Massachusetts native now residing in San Francisco and completing his MFA in poetry at San Francisco State University. He is the co-curator of the Living Room Reading Series and has been most recently published in Switchback. Prior to attending SFSU, Rick attended Elmira College in Elmira, New York where he played on the men’s hockey team.

Aracely Gonzalez is a fiction writer and teacher. She was raised in Salinas, California where she drew inspiration from the row fields in her horizon. She earned an MA in English from San Francisco State University and is co-founder of Fish Soup, an all-women cross genre writing workshop. Her writing has appeared in various journals, including Suspect Thoughts: A Journal of Subversive Writing.

Myron Michael Hardy is a poet and recording artist. He is a Cave Canem fellow and earned an MFA in writing from California College of the Arts. His work has been published in several journals and he was a finalist for the Blue Light Poetry Prize Chapbook Competition. He has recorded two albums: “Songs of Experience” and “Masters Thesis.”

Cindy Je was born in Korea and moved to the United States as a child. She earned her BA at University of California, Riverside and her MFA in writing at the University of Oregon. She has been a mentor and case manager for homeless youth and has taught students from a range of backgrounds and ages, from middle school students to university students. She is the recipient of the Ina Coolbrith Memorial Prize and the Roy T. Thompson Poetry Award.

Carrie Leilam Love is a writer based in Oakland. She has an MFA in fiction from San Francisco State University and has been published by Drunk N Sailor Press and Intersection for the Arts. She has worked in education for more than 10 years, teaching students from preschool to college. Carrie rides a magenta bike most places she goes and trains for triathlons when she is not too busy writing, teaching or curating her soon-to-be-renowned ’80s boot collection.

Milta Ortiz is a writer, performer and arts educator. She earned her creative writing degree from San Francisco State University. She wrote, produced and performed “Scatter My Red Underwear,” a hybrid play funded by the City of Oakland Cultural Arts Department and the Zellerbach Family Foundation. Milta has been published in Coyolxuahqui, Cipatli and “Days I Moved Through Ordinary Sounds.” She is one third of the spoken word group Las Manas Tres and a founding member of HYPE theater troupe.

Staff

Melissa Hung, acting program manager, is a writer and editor. A graduate of Northwestern University’s creative writing and journalism programs, Melissa has written for newspapers, magazines and literary journals. As a journalist, she wrote stories about people, social issues and culture. She is the founding editor of Hyphen, an Asian American culture magazine, and a frequent speaker on independent media. She also founded Slant, a festival of short films at the Aurora Picture Show in Houston.

Judith Tannenbaum, training coordinator, has served on the training staff of WritersCorps since the program’s inception. A keynote speaker on prison arts and education, she has taught in public schools and prisons for 35 years. Her books include “Teeth, Wiggly as Earthquakes: Writing Poetry in the Primary Grades;” “Disguised as A Poem: My Years Teaching Poetry at San Quentin;” and “By Heart: Poetry, Prison, and Two Lives” (New Village Press, April 2010). Read Judith’s blog and learn more about her work and about teaching arts and prison arts at her website or Redroom.

Janet Heller, founding director, has taught English in high school, colleges and community settings in Louisiana and Florida. She is the co-founder of Runaway with Words, a creative writing program for runaway and homeless youth in Florida. Janet graduated with an MA in creative writing from Florida State University and is the recipient of an Arts Administration Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Nirmala Nataraj, program associate, is a San Francisco-based critic and playwright. She has written for  ColorLines magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, SF Weekly, Theatre Bay Area magazine, and American Theatre magazine. Nirmala is an original member of grassroots theatre company No Nude Men Productions. Her work has been featured at the Climate Theatre, EXIT Stage Left, Femina Potens, the San Francisco Theater Festival, and the Bay Area Playwrights Festival.

Advisory Board

Anne Wintroub, Friends of the San Francisco Public Library

Chrissy Anderson-Zavala, Streetside Stories

David Blazevich, The Bernard Osher Foundation

Valerie Chow Bush, Communications consultant

Kimberly Harding,Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

Andrea Helmboldt, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Aimee LeDuc, SFAC Gallery

Randall Martinez, Cordoba Corporation

Judy Nemzoff, San Francisco Arts Commission

Tomás Riley, ArtsChange

Alison Seevak, Writer