They have all taken their writing and stage talents to literally thousands of individuals wanting to improve their writing and performing skills.

Our team members have presented at numerous college campuses, The National Conference of Teachers of English, hundreds of elementary, middle and high schools across the Untied States and abroud.

He shared the SlamMaster duties in Ann Arbor with his wife, Debora, and friends Larry Francis and Erik Daniel from 1994 until 2006. His new book, DOG-KU, is due out from Thomas Dunne books in October of 2008. His dog haiku (which continues to be a lesson in hubris) has been used wildly, both legally and illegally for everything from t-shirts and coffee mugs, to c alendars for The Royal Corgi Society and an operatic libretto. His work is readily available from poetryslam.com, thewordsmithpress.com and amazon.com among others.
E-Mail Steve

Thibault was born April 23, 1965 in Battle Creek, Michigan (which coincidently may be the same day as William Shakespeare's birthday and death). He graduated from Western Michigan University in 1988 and later paid more for his books than for his tuition to earn a masters degree at Indiana State University. Thibault is the Original SlamMaster at Fargo, ND where he brought a team to the National Poetry Slam (NPS) in 1998. He has also established poetry slams at the University of Michigan, and State University of New York, College at Oneonta.

He produced the first national collegiate poetry slam in 2001 and continues to spread the gospel of slam and community building to college campuses across North America. Thibault has emceed poetry slams at more twenty-five colleges and universities in North America. Thibault has presented at several national and international conferences in higher education. He published first book of poetry, A Crack in the Rocks in August 2004 with The Wordsmith Press. He has published several articles in professional periodicals and contributed to the Complete Idiots Guide to Slam Poetry by Marc Kelly Smith and Joe Kraynak. He lives in Otego, New York as a country gentleman with his wife Michelle and daughter Zosia.
E-Mail Robb

Five time captain and coach of the Cleveland Slam team that represented the city at the National Poetry Slam competition. He is the founder and director of the Nova Lizard project, a seminal performance troupe in Cleveland, Ohio and chief facilitator of the teen writing and performance program at Cleveland's Playhouse Square Foundation - the second largest performing arts center in the United States after Broadway.

His latest publication, Stingray , was published by Word Smith Press of Ann Arbor in 2007. A collection of humorous poems defining S.A.T vocabulary words, illustrated by Sam Henderson, is due out in 2008 from Boyds Mills Press. Website www.michaelsalinger.com
E-Mail Michael

Big Poppa E burst onto the scene as a member of the '99 San Francisco Poetry Slam Team, co-champions of the '99 National Poetry Slam in Chicago and the only undefeated team out of 48 that year. The piece he performed on the finals stage -- "The Wussy Boy Manifesto" -- has since become a rallying cry for outcasts, dorks, dweebs, and feebs everywhere, leading Ms. Magazine to proclaim him "an icon for effeminate males" and The Los Angeles Times to declare him "the leader of the new Wussy Boy movement." The piece is now one of the most popular poetry slam works performed by high school speech competitors across the country.

BPE is in charge of all things extracurricular and fun - you looking for a late night cypher, someone to head up the snipe hunt? He's your man!

Olson's innumerable stage, broadcast, radio and print appearances include, most recently, twice headlining HBO's "Def Poetry Jam" (Russell Simmons), and an inclusion in Utne Magazine's InRadio compilation. Utne's website calls Olson ?...the spoken word diva everyone's talking about."

Alix has graced the cover of Ms. Magazine, who called Olson a "road-poet-on-a-mission," and her work has been featured in Girlfriends Magazine, The Advocate, OUT Magazine, Curve, Lesbian Review of Books, and on the covers of Lambda Book Report, Lavender Lens, and Velvet Park magazines. A recent interview with Olson for The Progressive calls her a "word warrior" and gives a comprehensive peek into just what makes her work so compelling. Alix has appeared on the nationally syndicated Air America's "Unfiltered" radio, as well as on Oxygen television, CNN, HBO, In the Life, and WXPN's World Cafe with David Dye, and local radio stations around the country.

Alix was voted "Best Activist," along with MoveOn, in Venus Magazine's Hott List 2004. Olson was voted 2004 OutMusician of the Year (OutMusic), and was a triple nominee for the 2002 OUTMusic Awards. In June 2003, Alix (along with Margaret Cho and Nobuko Oyabu) received the "Visionary Award" from the DC Rape Crisis Center for her "exceptional commitment to the promotion of social justice." Past honorees include Gloria Steinem, Tori Amos, Patricia Ireland and Sarah Jones. Olson has also received a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, and a Barbara Deming grant.

He was inducted into the Thomson-Gale Contemporary Black Biography encyclopedia in 2006. He was the founder of the poetry performance group The Black Air Poets, and has published articles, reviews and other prose. He was the coach and a member of the Columbus Slam Team that placed third in the 2000 Rust Belt Regional Poetry Slam (and won it in 2001), and was the coach and a member of Columbus's first-ever National Poetry Slam Team that participated in the 2001 National Poetry Slam. He is currently President of Poetry Slam Inc., which oversees the annual National Poetry Slam and the Individual World Poetry Slam; MCs an open mic series in Columbus, Ohio; is the founder of the Greatest Slow Jam Ever website; and DJs interactive music sets as Scott's Groove Locker. He also writes a monthly poetry column - "Poetry Is Doomed" - for GotPoetry.com.

In April 2006 Scott made history by performing the first-ever 24-hour poetry feature, a feat he bested by doing another 24-hour feature in April of 2007, but without repeating a single poem from the previous year. Website: www.blackair.org

Highlights of his recent tours include a keynote address shared with Robert Bly at the First Coast Writer's Conference, a featured reading at the opening of City Light's Italia in Florence with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and a performance with his band Tongue in Groove at the Starwood Festival, opening for legendary drummer Babatunde Oluntunje. In the summer of 2001 he toured Russia with Yevgeny Yevtushenko where he appeared on Good Morning, Russia and performed at the Moscow Polytech, the Russian Poets' Hall of Fame where he was dubbed 'The American Mayakovsky.'

He has received numerous awards for his writing and performance, most recently the 2001 Hart Crane Award from KSU, a residency in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, and a residency at the Jack Kerouac House in Orlando, Florida. He was the captain of two National Poetry Slam Championship teams ('92 Boston, '94 Cleveland) and won the Arkansas Grand Slam, the largest performance poetry prize honorarium ever awarded.

He is also an accomplished actor and has appeared in plays at Ensemble, Dobama, Cleveland Public and Cleveland Playhouse theatres. He was an original cast member of the improv comedy Flanigan's Wake. He performs in schools as Johnny Appleseed and Thomas Jefferson. For more information please go to his web page http://www.raymcniece.com

McKibbens is the SlamMaster for NYC/louderARTS and has coached her team to the finals two years in a row. She is a poetry mentor for Urban Word NYC and taught poetry through The Healing Arts Program at Bellevue Hospital for four years. Her poetry and short stories have been published in numerous collections and anthologies, and she is currently working on a series of one-act plays. She is a 2007 New York Foundation of the Arts poetry fellow and a 2007 Pushcart nominee.

"A talent rare charismatic and humane…you sing and chant for all of us. Nobody gets left out" ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Author, songwriter, educator and workshop facilitator Regie Gibson has performed taught and lectured at universities, theaters and various other venues in seven countries including Havana, Cuba. Both he and his work appear in the New Line Cinema film "love jones" a film based on events in his life.

He was Writer in Residence at the Effie O. Ellis Center sponsored by National-Louis University and is Chernin Center for the Arts Community Writers Fellow. His work has appeared in a number of anthologies and journals including The Harvard Divinity Bulletin, The Iowa Review and P oetry Magazine. He is a National Poetry Slam Individual Champion, has been a featured numerous times on NPR, on HBO's Def Poetry Jam, and was nominated for a Boston Emmy Award for his featured performance on WGBH-2 Art Close-Up. In 1999 Regie founded "The Church of the Funky Word": A literary and musical arts ensemble utilizing classical, contemporary and original literary texts, music and rituals from various world cultures.

In addition to his teaching and performances, Regie lectures on poetry, creative writing, and communication for young adults. His first collection of poems Storms Beneath the Skin has received the Golden Pen Award. He is currently working on two manuscripts and has received his MFA in poetry from New England College.