Who Makes VIDA Happen

Managing Editor

Melinda Wilson

Melinda Wilson’s chapbook Amplexus was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2010, and her poems have appeared in Arsenic Lobster, Verse Daily, Diner, WOMB, Avatar Review, The Lumberyard, Agriculture Reader and elsewhere. She is Managing Editor and regular contributor of criticism for Coldfront Magazine (www.coldfrontmag.com). In 2005, Melinda was recipient of the Daniel Morin Poetry Prize judged by Charles Simic and Mekeel McBride at The University of New Hampshire. She completed an MFA in poetry at The New School in 2007 and currently lives and teaches in New York City.

Online Producer

Tara Rebele

Tara Rebele’s first book, And I’m Not Jenny: Performance :: Writing, was published in 2005 by Slope Editions, and her poems have appeared in journals such as Volt, Salt, How2, Dusie, and Sleeping Fish. She has performed her multimedia solo works to live, proximal audiences in New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Milwaukee, Boston, Richmond, and Atlanta, among other places and exhibited her new media works worldwide. She has recently joined New England College’s MFA Poetry Program to teach its new concentration offering in New Media Poetics.

Press Officer

Ana Božičević

Ana Božičević was born in Zagreb, Croatia in 1977. She emigrated to New York in 1997. Stars of the Night Commute (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2009), her first book of poems, was a finalist for the 2010 Lambda Literary Award in Poetry. Ana received her MFA in Poetry from Hunter College, worked in academic publishing and at PEN American Center, and is now the Program Manager at the Center for the Humanities of The Graduate Center, CUNY. In Fall 2010 she was honored by the Feminist Press in their 40 Feminists Under 40 Gala. With Amy King, Ana co-edits esque. For more, visit www.anabozicevic.com.

The Count

Amy King

Amy King is the author of four collections of poetry: Slaves to Do These Things, I’m the Man Who Loves You, and Antidotes for an Alibi (a Lambda Book Award finalist), all from Blazevox Books, and the forthcoming I Want to Make You Safe (Litmus Press). King moderates the Poetics List (SUNY-Buffalo/University of Pennsylvania), the Women’s Poetry Listserv (WOMPO) and the Goodreads Poetry! Group. She also teaches English and Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College and is currently preparing a book of interviews with the poet, Ron Padgett. King co-edits Poets for Living Waters with Heidi Lynn Staples and Esque Magazine with Ana Bozicevic. Visit her current site here.

Her Kind: VIDA’s Blog (Coming soon)

Rosebud Ben-Oni, Writer & Editor

Rosebud Ben-Oni is a writer for New Perspectives Theater, which is producing her play Quimera on the Pedernales, and has been the recipient of a Horace Goldsmith Grant, given so she could complete her first novel, which deals with her experiences as a Jew of mixed race. She has had recent work in Slice Magazine, J Journal, Wreckage of Reason: An Anthology of Contemporary XXperimental Prose by Women Writers, Arts & Letters, Identity Envy— Wanting to be Who We Are Not, and The Texas Poetry Review. Recently produced plays include Owless of Santa Clara (Snorks and Pins, Roy Arias Studios, July 2010), Nikita (Shotgun Theater Festival, the Gene Frankel Theatre, Jan 2009 and Thespian Productions, Producer’s Club, May 2009); Nary a Bodega (Leah Ryan Benefit, Producer’s Club, November 2009); The Amaranthine Thread (Leah Ryan Benefit, Producer’s Club, November 2009 and Where Eagles Dare, February 2010). She is currently finishing her first novel, which is entitled The Imitation of Crying.

Arisa White, Writer & Editor

Arisa White is a Cave Canem fellow and holds an MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Author of two chapbooks,Disposition for Shininess (Factory Hollow Press, 2008) and Post Pardon (Mouthfeel Press, 2011), she was selected by the San Francisco Guardian for the 2010 Hot Pink List. She has received residencies, fellowships, and/or scholarships from Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Hedgebrook, Atlantic Center for the Arts, University of Western Michigan, Fine Arts Work Center, and Bread Loaf Writers’s Conference. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2005, her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and is featured on WORD with the Jessica Jones Quartet. She currently lives in Oakland, CA.

Director of Design

Nancy Smith

Nancy Smith is a graphic designer and writer. Her work has been published in Communication Arts, The Believer, Adbuster’s, and Seattle Weekly. Nancy received her MA in Media Studies from The New School and is currently pursuing an MFA in Writing at the University of San Francisco. She is the editor and publisher of Stumble magazine. (www.nancymadethis.com)

Grants Coordinator

Alyss Dixson

Alyss Dixson received a BA in Comparative Literature from Yale. She began her career as an intern for the Story Department for New Line Cinema, New York and later transferred to New Line’s West Coast office. She left New Line to work as an assistant and Script Coordinator on the film Money Talks, the debut film of director Brett Ratner. Afterward, Brett hired her to head up his new company, Rat Entertainment, based at New Line. For five years she acted as principal executive and producer at the company working on films like Rush Hour, Family Man, Paid in Full (Dimension/Miramax) and as an associate producer on Double Take (Disney). Later, she joined Paramount Pictures as a Vice President of Production, Worldwide, and now writes and produces and consults for film and television. Writer Mollie Gregory featured Ms. Dixson in her book Women Who Run the Show (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). She is hard at work on her forthcoming debut novel, A Place Called Paradise.

New Media Administrator

Jojo Lazar

jojo Lazar was born in Washington, DC. She received a BA in three majors from Brandeis University and her MFA in creative writing from Lesley University. She is a Boston-based performance artist/vaude-villain known as “the burlesque poetess” as well as the tenor ukulele player in the circus band, “Walter Sickert & The Army of Broken Toys.” She is the host of “salon gone wrong: evenings of poetry & delinquency,” and has been creating and distributing a zine, “niblet” since 2004. In addition to tweetwenching she runs VIDA’s new tumblelog (blog): vidaweb.tumblr.com.

Administrative Coordinator

Natalie Bryant Rizzieri

Natalie Bryant-Rizzieri is a poet and international social activist. She received her MFA from Lesley University. Her work has appeared in Crab Orchard Review and Connotations. She is also the founder of Friends of Warm Hearth, a group home for Armenian orphans with disabilities. She lives in Queens.