Executive Director
Named one of the “100 Most Influential People in Brooklyn Culture” by Brooklyn Magazine, Jason Koo is the founder and executive director of Brooklyn Poets and creator of the Bridge. A second-generation Korean American poet, he is the author of the poetry collections More Than Mere Light, America’s Favorite Poem and Man on Extremely Small Island and coeditor of the Brooklyn Poets Anthology. The winner of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center and New York State Writers Institute, he earned his BA in English from Yale, his MFA in creative writing from the University of Houston and his PhD in English and creative writing from the University of Missouri-Columbia. He is an associate teaching professor of English at Quinnipiac University and lives in Beacon, NY.
Deputy Director
renée kay (they/them) is a queer poet in Brooklyn by way of Appalachia and other beautiful, strange places. Their work can be found in Copper Nickel, Catapult, Yes Poetry, Glass, Perhappened, lickety-split and elsewhere, and they were recently selected as a semifinalist for Southeast Review’s Gearhart Poetry Contest. They graduated from the University of Tennessee with a BS in Quantitative Methods in Economics and Math. In lieu of continuing with higher-ed, they have chosen an ongoing MFA of engagement and have been lucky enough to learn from Jay Desphande, Natalie Eilbert, Shira Erlichman, Paul Tran and others. In 2020, they worked with Angel Nafis in Catapult’s year-long poetry intensive.
Mentorship Program Director
Jay Deshpande is the author of Love the Stranger (YesYes Books, 2015), named one of the top debuts of 2015 by Poets & Writers, and the chapbooks The Rest of the Body (YesYes Books, 2017) and The Umbrian Sonnets (PANK Books, 2020). A 2018–20 Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and the winner of the Scotti Merrill Memorial Award and Narrative‘s Annual Poetry Contest, he has also received fellowships from Kundiman, Civitella Ranieri, and the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. His poems have appeared in the American Poetry Review, New Republic and New England Review, among many other places. He is an advisory editor for Northwest Review and writes criticism for Guernica, Pleiades, Kenyon Review and Boston Review. He holds a BA in English from Harvard and an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University and has taught workshops for Poets House, the Academy of American Poets and Columbia’s MFA program.
Features Editor & Bridge Coordinator
Justin Maki is a writer and editor based in New York City. He studied at the University of Colorado–Boulder and in Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program and has edited books related to global media, humanitarian crisis reporting and the politics of representation in foreign news. After four years as a teacher in Osaka, Japan, he currently works in the NYC bureau of a Japanese news agency. He joined Brooklyn Poets in 2013.
Assistant Manager, 144 Montague St
Nicole Albanese (she/her) is a writer and performer based in Brooklyn, NY. A recent graduate of Georgetown University and Leslie Zemeckis’ Stories Matter program, Nicole has received mentorship from esteemed playwrights and poets, including Christine Evans and Georgia Jones-Davis. She most enjoys writing about memory, ghosts, and intersections of the sacred and profane.
Assistant Manager, 144 Montague St
Bella Blue is a poet and organizer living in LenapeHoking / brooklyn, originally from Huchiun / oakland, california. She is currently wrapping up her degree in global studies with a minor in poetry at the New School, where her research focuses on nuclear colonialism, queer ecologies, abolition, and the usage of poetry in liberation movements. Her poetic work unpacks notions of consumption, land, labor, the nonhuman world and embodiment. From 2018 to 2019, she was the editor-in-chief of Enizagam Literary Journal.
Assistant Manager, 144 Montague St
Caroline Crawford (they/she) is a multimedia artist, writer, and project-person living in Brooklyn after chapters in Northeast Ohio, Tennessee, and London. They earned a BA in English and Psychology from Vanderbilt University, where their work was published in The Vanderbilt Review. Her poetic writing has recently woven together obsessions with geology & mineralogy, fantastical world-building, and tensions between queer and religious identities to explore and celebrate the regenerative life that emerges in affirming spaces.
Office Manager & Bridge Editor
Jae Eason is from Long Island, New York. Growing up, Brooklyn was the place where they found their space within the poetry community. They graduated with a BA in English literature from Arizona State University, and the desert is where their voice flourished. Their poetry is the study of how everything in the world connects and the spaces that lay in between.
Social Media & Membership Manager
Paula Gil-Ordoñez Gomez is a poet and narrative strategist based in New York City. She graduated from Tufts University, where she majored in international relations and minored in Latinx studies, focusing on human rights. While at Tufts, Paula edited poetry and prose for the Tufts Observer and studied creative writing under Natalie Shapero and Joseph Hurka. She finds joy in being part of creative communities.
Bridge Editor
Sébastien Bernard is a Turkish poet and fiction writer based in Istanbul. His work appears in Evergreen Review, DIAGRAM, SUSAN/The Journal, KGB Bar Lit, Prelude and Queen Mob’s Teahouse, among other places. He was a 2018 Poets House Emerging Poets Fellow and has also called NYC, Poughkeepsie and Maputo home.
Bridge Editor
Tarika Chandran is a 20-year-old college student currently taking a break from the college part of her title. Now she spends her time writing for fun and just being a student of the world. A serial procrastinator, yet ever the optimist, she believes that one day her motivational drive will catch up to her love for writing.
Bridge Editor
Gabriel M. Purpura is a Puerto Rican/British, Marine Corps Veteran, poet based in San Diego, California. He holds a BA in English from Quinnipiac University. His poetry focuses on life after the military experience and growing up mixed.
Bridge Editor
Lila Rutishauser is a queer poet born and raised in New York City. She is more eager with every passing day to return to Smith College in person, where she plans to study the mind, movement, creative writing, and Generalized Unemployment Studies™. By day, she works as a nursery school teacher and writes during the rare moments between yogurt spills.
Bridge Editor
Kyndal Thomas is a Texas-raised, Brooklyn-based poet. She graduated with honors from the creative writing program at Northwestern University, where she received a Faricy Award for Poetry. Her work explores multiraciality, privilege, lineage and intimacy as navigated within the everyday. She works in the literary nonprofit sphere and is passionate about inclusive and accessible creative spaces. In her spare time, you can find her listening to ghost podcasts and attempting to prove to her loved ones that she has, in fact, taught her cat how to play fetch. In the summer of 2019, she was awarded a Brooklyn Poets Fellowship.
Intern
Parrish is a visual artist, writer and environmental educator. She grew up in North Carolina and moved to Brooklyn after graduating from the University of North Carolina, where she studied global studies and creative writing. She loves reading, writing, and hearing poetry. Most of her poems come from nature, which, the city taught her, is everywhere and includes us all. She currently works teaching gardening classes in NYC schools.
Intern
Chelsea Flemming is an international graduate student from Trinidad and Tobago. She enjoys words and you can always find her with a book in hand. Chelsea is a lover before all else, and her stories often highlight her thoughts on love, finding joy in seemingly mundane things, sex, and connection, as well as the journey of healing and recovery. When she is not obsessively reading or writing, Chelsea spends most of her time baking banana bread, restaurant hopping, overanalyzing films and calling her mum.
Intern
Jaida Foreman was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, and has been performing since 2001. Whether it be ballet recitals, church choir and eventually off-Broadway performances, Jaida’s youth was catered to their love for performing. They graduated salutatorian of Professional Performing Arts School in 2015 and completed the Integrated Musical Theater program at American Musical Dramatic Academy in 2017. After their intense experience at conservatory, Jaida took a break from performing to create and focus on their spiritual collective, HeavenlyFlowerHealing. Most recently, Jaida has performed their original spoken word pieces as a featured performer at several open mics and also hosted and curated their own events. Jaida is incredibly grateful for the opportunity to create magic with this project and excited to continue developing creatively within their community.
Intern
Jess Gagne (she/her) is a Montessori educator and poet from Connecticut who is currently living, teaching and writing in Brooklyn. She is working on keeping all her plants alive, mastering the art of the stationary bicycle, reading more nonfiction and writing a poem in time to read at the Brooklyn Poets Yawp open mic each month.
Intern
Originally from Southern California, Kirra Hemric graduated with her bachelors in English from St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights. Currently, she’s working on completing her MFA in creative writing at St. Francis. When she isn’t working on her novel, she writes poems exploring the raw moments of life and all that it entails.
Intern
Hunter Hodkinson (he/him) is a queer writer and poet living in Brooklyn, NY, after a rural upbringing in Northeast Ohio. His work can be found in Saint Katherine Review, Samfiftyfour, Meat For Tea: The Valley Review and elsewhere. Hunter seeks to uncover truth about his own past by taking trauma and funneling it through the prism of poetry. His inspiration stems from his small-town origins and giving a voice to those muffled by the echo chamber of Appalachia. Hunter likes writing about his grandmother, capitalism and evil rich people on the Upper East Side.
Intern
Megan Mandrachio (she/her) is a Salvadoran-American writer and educator collecting words in Brooklyn, New York. Her newsletter, Pretending to Be a Writer, is dedicated to memoir, tangents, and her love of lists. Her favorite word is “superfluous” and her favorite symbol is the semicolon.
Intern
Darius Phelps is a doctoral student at Teachers College, Columbia University. He is an adjunct professor at CUNY–Queens, Hunter College and Teachers College. An educator, poet, spoken word artist, and activist, Darius writes poems about grief, liberation, emancipation, reflection through the lens of a teacher of color, and experiencing Black boy joy.
Intern
Flannery Maeve Rollins (she/her) is an educator and poet from New Jersey. She is the recipient of the Edna H. Herzberg Prize, the Evelyn Hamilton Award, and the Julia Carley Prize from Rutgers University-New Brunswick. Flannery has received support from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and The Academy of American Poets. She is a poetry candidate at Rutgers University-Newark, currently completing her master thesis. Her work has previously appeared in the Louisville Review, Crooked Arrow Press, and on poets.org.
Intern
Kayla Schwab (she/her) is a Brooklyn-based poet, copywriter and yoga teacher. She has been attending the Brooklyn Poets Yawp since July 2018, and she has been an active member of Sweet Action Poetry Collective since 2019. Kayla graduated in 2017 from Vassar College, where she received English Department Honors and was the winner of the Deanne Beach Stoneham Prize for Best Original Poetry. Her work has been published in Stone Pacific Zine, Intangible Magazine and Oyedrum, where her poem “Great Expectations” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2021. You can connect with her on Instagram @80smomchic and on Twitter @KaylaAnnSchwab.
Intern
Marisa Vito is a queer Californian, Filipinx poet who has published with Crab Fat Magazine, the Spectacle, Mixed Mag, Phyll Magazine and the Los Angeles Magazine. They graduated from the University of California–San Diego with a degree in English literature/writing, and they are the digital content manager for Copper Canyon Press. When not reading or writing, they enjoy cooking, baking, gardening and studying/talking about societal theory. They are based in Brooklyn, NY.
Intern
Hafsa Zulfiqar (she/her) hails from Pakistan and is a recent graduate of Bennington College, where she studied literature and psychology. Her work, which has received the WNDB Walter Grant and a Pushcart nomination, explores Brown identity, dreams, language, liminality and, above all, the notion of home; it can be found or is forthcoming in the Margins, the Offing, Columbia Journal, South Dakota Review, Kissing Dynamite and Anti-Heroin Chic. You can find her on Twitter @HafsaZUnar and @vibingwithabook on Instagram.