Staff

Teaching Artists

Mahru Elahi is a writer, teacher and graphic novelist. A recipient of a 2006 Hedgebrook Residency, she earned her BA in American Studies from UC Santa Cruz and her MS in teaching from New School University in New York City. She has participated in the Voices of Our Nations Writing Workshop and her writing recently appeared in “Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora.”

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 songs are featured on “Songs of Experience” and the forthcoming “Masters Thesis.” His words have appeared in Beeswax, Words+Images, and Pluck. He is currently at the heart of San Francisco drawing squares and searching for Fibonacci.

Cindy Je was born in Korea and moved to the United States as a child. She earned her BA at UC 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.

Milta Ortiz is a poet, playwright, performer and revolutionary arts educator. She earned her BA in creative writing from San Francisco State University and is the recipient of a 2006 Individual Artist Grant from the City of Oakland. She is a member of Las Manas, an all women spoken word collective. She also performs a one-woman hybrid theater piece “Scatter My Red Underwear.”

Beto Palomar is a Xicano poet and artist born and raised in Los Angeles and Watts, California. He learned and taught poetry in June Jordan’s Poetry for the People at UC Berkeley where he graduated with a degree in interdisciplinary studies with a self-designed major, political poetry of the world. He is a recipient of a 2007-08 individual artist grant from the City of San Francisco.

Karla Robinson is an artist and activist who has taught theater and writing to people of all ages, including at-risk youth, incarcerated youth and female drug offenders. She has also facilitated arts and peer education programs around issues of community violence. She has performed with Starfish Theatreworks in New York and in “BeatBox: A Raparetta” and The Herstories Projects’ “Bone Songs: Echoes of the Unknown Mother.”

Artist in Residence

Katharine Gin has worked in arts and literary education for at-risk youth for over 14 years. She has taught photography and creative writing to youth in a variety of settings. Her artistic work with students has been published in The New York Times and the recent edition of the award-winning college textbook, “Seeing & Writing 3.” Katharine has a BA in architecture from Yale University and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Oregon.

Staff

Janet Heller, Program Manager, is the founding director of the San Francisco WritersCorps. She 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.

Judith Tannenbaum, Training Coordinator, has served on the training staff of WritersCorps since the program’s inception. A panelist and keynote speaker on prison arts and education, she has taught through California Poets in the Schools, Arts-in-Corrections, and UC Berkeley’s Academic Talent Development Program. She has published two books: “Teeth, Wiggly as Earthquakes: Writing Poetry in the Primary Grades;” and a memoir, “Disguised as A Poem: My Years Teaching Poetry at San Quentin.” Judith has also edited several WritersCorps books. Read Judith’s blog and learn more about her work.

Melissa Hung, Program Associate, is a writer and journalist. A graduate of Northwestern University’s creative writing and journalism programs, Melissa has written for newspapers, magazines and literary journals. She is the founding editor of Hyphen, a national Asian American culture magazine, and a frequent speaker on Asian American media and independent media. She also curates Slant, an annual festival of short films at the Aurora Picture Show in Houston.