GET LIT In YOUR CLASSROOM

SYLVIE VAUGHT received a BA in Gender Studies and African American Studies from UCLA in 2016, receiving the Renaissance Award for Women from the Center of UCLA Study For Women. In 2018 she completed her MA from UCLA in Media Studies where she focused on critical theory surrounding representations of women within an intersectional societal lens. Sylvie’s work focuses on healing racial, societal, ancestral, and cis heteropatriarchal trauma through her advanced study of Shri Vidya tantra. She is a part of the Forest Path lineage as a practitioner of Maa Uma-Parvathi Natha, one of the eminent Shri Vidya Masters of Modern times. Sylvie leads workshops and healing circles for women, especially in the BIPOC community.

‍KELLY GRACE THOMAS is the Director of Education and Pedagogy for Get Lit- Words Ignite. She has a degree in Writing, Literature and Publishing from Emerson College, and a Masters in Education from National University. She taught high English for ten years, five of which she used the Get Lit Curriculum. Kelly is a three-time poetry slam championship coach and the co-author of the textbook Words Ignite: Explore, Write and Perform, Classic and Spoken Word Poetry, currently taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Kelly is the winner of the 2020 Jane Underwood Poetry Prize, 2017 Neil Postman Award for Metaphor from Rattle, and multiple-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her first full-length collection, Boat Burned, was released with YesYes Books in January 2020. Kelly’s poems have appeared in: Best New Poets 2019, Los Angeles Review, Redivider, Nashville Review, Muzzle, DIAGRAM, and more.

‍DIANE LUBY LANE is the Founder/Executive Director of Get Lit–Words Ignite, a Los Angeles-based arts education nonprofit that’s transformed the landscape of teen literacy through her standards-based curriculum, which has been adopted by schools throughout the U.S. and internationally. Her most recent book, Get Lit Rising (Simon & Schuster), is a winner of the 2016 Nautilus Award for books that “carry a potent message” and bring “hope, healing, wisdom, and joy.” She is a TedX speaker, a graduate of the Annenberg Foundation’s Alchemy + Leadership Program, a Southern California Leadership Network Fellow, and served on L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Poet Laureate Committee. She co-produced the feature film Summertime, which premiered at Sundance 2020, written by and starring 27 Get Lit poets and the documentary film Our Words Collide (following 5 Get Lit poets) which won the ADL Award (Anti-defamation Award), 2022. She has been featured in the L.A. Times, CNN, NPR, and is a recipient of the Presidential Lifetime Volunteer Service Award.

DR. MISHUANA GOEMAN, daughter of enrolled Tonawanda Band of Seneca, Hawk Clan, is a Professor of Gender Studies and American Indian Studies, as well as an affiliated faculty of Critical Race Studies in the Law School at UCLA. She is also the inaugural Special Advisor to the Chancellor on Native American and Indigenous Affairs. Her monographs include Mark My Words: Native Women Mapping Our Nations (University of Minnesota Press, 2013) and the forthcoming Settler Aesthetics and the Spectacle of Originary Moments: Terrence Malick’s the New World (University of Nebraska Press). She is also part of the feminist editorial collective for Keywords in Gender and Sexuality Studies from NYU Press forthcoming in October 2021. Her community-engaged work is devoted to several digital humanities projects, including participation as a Co-PI on community-based digital projects, Mapping Indigenous L.A (2015), which gathers alternative maps of resiliency from Indigenous LA communities, and Carrying Our Ancestors Home (2019), a site concentrating on better working tribal relationships and communications as it concerns repatriation and NAGPRA. She is also heading up the new Mukurtu California Native Hub housed at AISC through an NEH grant. She also publishes widely in peer-reviewed journals and books, including guest-edited volumes on Native Feminisms and Indigenous Performances. From 2020-2021 she was a Distinguished Visiting Scholar with the Center for Diversity Innovation at the University of Buffalo located in her home territories.

‍ALLAN AQUINO graduated from Cal State Northridge in 1998 as a Special Major in Asian American and Comparative Ethnic Histories. After attaining his Masters in Asian American Studies from UCLA, he began his career as a Lecturer and community organizer at CSUN in the fall of 2000. He has also lectured at UCLA and Loyola Marymount University. A published poet and writer, Allan is the former president of the Filipino American National Historical Society (Los Angeles chapter) and founding member of the Larry Itliong Foundation through Education. His scholarship focuses upon Asian Pacific American history, media, contemporary issues, pop culture, and literary arts.

‍RON ESPIRITU has been teaching Ethnic Studies classes to high school students in Los Angeles for the past sixteen years. He currently serves as the program coordinator of Camino Nuevo Charter Academy’s K-12 Interdisciplinary Ethnic Studies Program in Macarthur Park. He is a founding member of The People’s Education Movement, a grassroots community organization supporting educators in their development of critical pedagogy, social justice, and transformative justice. Espiritu is also a participant in local and national campaigns that promote Ethnic Studies approaches to teaching and learning. Ron has a BA in History and Interdisciplinary Ethnic Studies from Amherst College, a Masters degree from Loyola Marymount University in secondary literacy instruction, and a masters degree in School Leadership from California State University Dominguez Hills.

‍MIKE SONKSEN AKA MIKE THE POET is a 3rd-generation Los Angeles native. Poet, professor, journalist, historian and tour-guide, his latest book Letters to My City was published by Writ Large Press. Sonksen earned his BA at UCLA in 1997. In June 2014, he completed an Interdisciplinary MA in English and History from Cal State LA. He has published over 500 essays and poems with publications like Academy of American Poets, KCET, Poets & Writers Magazine, BOOM, Wax Poetics, Southern California Quarterly, LA Weekly, OC Weekly, Lana Turner, The Architect’s Newspaper, LA Alternative Press, Los Angeles Review of Books, Angel City Review, LA Taco and more. One of his KCET essays received an Award for Excellence by the Los Angeles Press Club. Over the last two decades, Sonksen has delivered more than 1,500 poetry readings in a wide range of venues including bookstores, museums, college campuses, secondary schools, and literary festivals, and presented his poetry on public radio stations KCRW, KPFK and KPCC and TV stations like Spectrum News. In 2013, the Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center honored Sonksen for "Distinguished Service to the Los Angeles Poetry Community." Sonksen teaches at Woodbury University where he is the Program Coordinator of the school’s First Year Experience Program.