Soul Sister Revue is a quarterly reading series for established and emerging poets who write in the narrative tradition of storytelling.

Christina Gayton is a poet, actress, model, and real estate salesperson based out of Manhattan and currently attending New York University, where she’s majoring in Economic Policy and Social Impact. She’s been involved with poetry for only a year now, but so far she has competed with UrbanWord’s Brave New Voices 2018 slam poetry team, been the alternate to the NYU CUPSI 2018 slam team, and performed at various venues and readings around NYC, most notably the Apollo Theatre. Her first poetry book will be published this Fall. You can keep up with her on instagram @christigabriella.

Jason Koo, named one of the “100 Most Influential People in Brooklyn Culture” by Brooklyn Magazine, was born in New York City and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. He is the author of three full-length collections of poetry: More Than Mere Light (Prelude Books, 2018), America’s Favorite Poem (C&R Press, 2014) and Man on Extremely Small Island (C&R Press, 2009), winner of the De Novo Poetry Prize and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop Members’ Choice Award for the best Asian American book of 2009. He is also the author of the chapbook Sunset Park(Frontier Slumber, 2017) and coeditor of the Brooklyn Poets Anthology (Brooklyn Arts Press & Brooklyn Poets, 2017). An associate teaching professor of English at Quinnipiac University, Koo has also taught writing at NYU and Lehman College–CUNY, where he served as the director of the graduate program in English, and as a senior writer-in-residence for Writers in the Schools. He is the founder and executive director of Brooklyn Poets and creator of the Bridge. He lives in Brooklyn..

Jasmine Reid is a twice trans poet-child of flowers. A 2018 Poets House Fellow and MFA candidate at Cornell University, her work has been published or is forthcoming in Muzzle Magazine, Yemassee Journal, WUSGOOD?, and WATER. Also a finalist for the 2018 Sonia Sanchez-Langston Hughes Poetry Prize, Jasmine was born and raised in Baltimore, MD, and is currently based in Brooklyn, NY.

Pamela Sneed is a New York-based poet, writer, performer and emerging visual artist. She is author of Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom than Slavery, KONG and Other Works and a chaplet, “Gift” by Belladonna. She has been featured in the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Time Out, BOMB, VIBE, and on the cover of New York Magazine. She has appeared in Art Forum, The Huffington Post and Hyperallergic. In 2017, she was a Visiting Critic at Yale and Columbia University. She is a Visiting Professor at Columbia University’s School of the Arts for 2017/18. She is online faculty at Chicago’s School of the Art Institute teaching Human Rights and Writing Art and has also been a Visiting Artist at SAIC in the MFA summer low-res program for 3 consecutive years. She has performed at the Whitney Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Poetry Project, NYU and Pratt Universities, Smack Mellon Gallery, The High Line, Performa, Danspace, The Bessies, Performance Space, Joe’s Pub, The Public Theater, SMFA, BRIC and was an artist- in- residence at Pratt University, Denniston Hill and Poet-Linc, Lincoln Center Education. She has toured internationally. She directed a final showcase at Lincoln Center Atrium. Her collage work appeared in Avram Finklestein’s FOUND at The Leslie Lohman Museum in 2017. She has created cover collage work for an upcoming Issue of Sinister Wisdom, (2018) Legacies of Resistance, “Dump Trump.” She has received a Monica Hand, July 2018 scholarship for the Fine Arts Workshop in Provincetown. Her work is widely anthologized and appears in Nikki Giovanni’s, “The 100 Best African American Poems.” Her short story book Sweet Dreams was published by Belladonna in April 2018. Visit http://www.belladonnaseries.org/sweet-dreams/

The Host – Ed Toney – Poet, writer and chemist, born in Queens NY, resides in Brooklyn. He has featured and read at numerous poetry venues including McNally Jackson bookstore, Barnes and Noble Bookstore, rallies for Mumia, Eric Garner, a unique benefit for Michael Brown that included aerialist performers, “Black Lives Matter” Black poets speak out forums,  and elsewhere. Ed’s work has appeared in African Voices 20^th Anniversary magazine, the chapbook; Of Fire of Iron, published by The Hot Poets collective,  a featured essay in Young’s Men Perspective magazine, Mosaic, Blue Lyra Review, and is very near, full completion on his first poetry manuscript entitled, “Nicks in the Tongue”.