Event

BGP Presents Jeanann Verlee

JEANANN VERLEE is an author, performance poet, editor, activist and former punk rocker who collects tattoos and wears polka dots. Her work has been published and is forthcoming in a variety of journals, including The New York Quarterly, Rattle, failbetter, kill author, and PANK, among others. Her poems have also been anthologized in publications such as Not A Muse: The Inner Lives of Women and His Rib: Poems Stories and Essays by Her. Verlee's first full-length book of poems, Racing Hummingbirds, earned the Independent Publisher Book Award Silver Medal in Poetry. Verlee won the Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry and has twice been nominated for a Pushcart. She is a poetry editor for Union Station Magazine and the Poets Portrait Project Anthology.

Verlee has represented New York City six times at the National Poetry Slam under two of the most highly-regarded poetry performance series in the nation: Urbana Poetry Slam and The louderARTS Project. Verlee was the highest-scoring individual poet at the 2008 National Poetry Slam Finals, was the 2009 NYC-Urbana iWPS Champion, and represented NYC-louderARTS at the 2010 Women of the World Poetry Slam. She is director of the Urbana Poetry Slam reading series in New York City, and serves as writing and performance coach for this three-time NPS Championship venue. She has performed and facilitated workshops at schools, theatres, bookstores, dive bars and poetry venues across North America.