Poet, slam scholar, and author of The Cultural Politics of Slam Poetry: Race, Identity, and the Performance of Popular Verse in America. She holds a Ph.D. in American Literature from The University of Texas at Austin. She has taught poetics and creative writing at Carnegie Mellon University, The University of Texas at Austin, Montclair State University, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her honors include the Ann Stanford Poetry Prize, a Gracie Award, a Pushcart Prize, and a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry.