Lunada Literary Lounge and Open Mic featuring Aya de Leon

Galería de la Raza
2857 24th Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

March 3, 7:30 p.m.
Lunada Literary Lounge and Open Mic featuring Aya de Leon

Admission: $5 (free w/ food dish or Galeria membership)

[nb: first of two posts highlighting March programs at the Galleria]

Writer, performer, hip hop theater artist, poetic activist, and community healer Aya de Leon lives in the Oakland Bay Area. Her work has received acclaim in the Village Voice, Washington Post, American Theatre Magazine, the Oakland Tribune, and San Francisco Chronicle. She was named best discovery in theater for 2004 by the SF Chronicle, and also in 2004, she received a Goldie award from the SF Bay Guardian in spoken word. In 2005 she was voted "Slamminest Poet" in the annual East Bay Express Best of the Bay. In November 2006, Aya performed in Voices of a People’s History with Mos Def, Alice Walker, Luis Valdez, Howard Zinn, Anthony Arnove, and others. In April of 2005, Aya and Mos Def co-hosted a kickoff rally for Current TV, Al Gore’s new cable network.

Aya has taught spoken word and poetry at Stanford University, and has been a guest artist in residence at New York Theatre Workshop. She is a Cave Canem poetry fellow, and a slam poetry champion. In 2003 she presented her work at the Ford Foundation in New York and The Mark Taper Forum in LA.

A graduate of Harvard College, Aya studied theater with Whoopi Goldberg, the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and the Jean Shelton School. She also studied fiction in the MFA program at Bennington College. She is currently working on her first novel and a collection of essays about self-love.

[image from Galleria Web site]