Poet Kenzie Allan
Poet Gint Aras
Music Koku Gonza
Kenzie Allen is a descendant of the Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin. She received her MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan, and she is currently an Advanced Opportunity Program Fellow in the PhD in English at the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee. Her work has been published in The Iowa Review, Indiana Review, Narrative, Drunken Boat, and other venues, and she is the recipient of fellowships from the Aspen Writers’ Foundation and Vermont Studio Center. She was born in West Texas, and spends time between her tribe’s reservation in Green Bay and her fiancé’s hometown in Norway.
Gint Aras is the author of two novels, Finding the Moon in Sugar (Infinity, 2009) and The Fugue (Tortoise Books, 2016), a finalist for the 2016 Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year Award. His prose and translations have appeared in the St. Petersburg Review, Quarterly West, Curbside Splendor, STIR Journal, ReImagine and elsewhere. He’s a community college instructor and currently lives in Oak Park, Illinois with his family.
Koku Gonza thrives as an indie artist 24 hours a day. She shares her alternative soul sounds from the subways of New York to the modern day swanky socialites of Hong Kong. She has shared the stage with Dwele, Timothy Bloom and Isaiah Sharkey. Her song, Koku Gonza has completed two international tours in Europe ending 2016 with a artist residency in Hong Kong, receiving rave reviews from various media outlets like Rolling Out Magazine, Track Source, Soul Bag Magazine and the +D’Afrique. Koku Gonza’s music has been compared to the late legends Bob Marley and contemporary artists like Sade and Lianne La Havas. She has a new soul funk dance song to release in 2017 featuring grammy-award winning guitarist Isaiah Sharkey.
BONK! 