ABE MANERI, POET

Abe is from a family of creative jazz musicians and is trained musically as a classical violinist and jazz pianist. He brings this musicianship and understanding of spontaneous collective improvisation to his poetry.

arisa white, poet

Arisa White holds a MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is a recipient of the Archie D. and Bertha H. Walker Scholarship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and was recently awarded a writing residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. She is a Cave Canem fellow, currently working on a second manuscript inspired by Nina Simone's "Four Women." By employing the use of dramatic monologue and oblique presentation of theme, Arisa casts a different generation of women who are confronted with domestic violence, AIDS, motherhood and lesbianism. Her poems appear in Gathering Ground: Cave Canem 10th Anniversary Reader, Meridians, Softblow, Snowvigate.com, Failbetter.com, A Gathering of Tribes, and African Voices.

EARL LECLAIRE, POET

Poet and philosopher, currently hiding out somewhere in North Carolina.

Tim Ereneta, storyteller

Storyteller Tim Ereneta brings to life traditional tales for contemporary audiences. His repertoire includes classic fairy tales as well as grim and gruesome folk tales of the Middle Ages.
Tim also creates stories in the moment, drawing on his roots in theatrical improvisation, for shows like You Go First or Storytellers Unplugged. He is the recipient of the National Storytelling Network's 2006 J.J. Reneaux Emerging Artist Grant. His performance was selected as one of the Top Five Acts of the 2005 Rogue Performance Festival, where The Fresno Bee called him "Droll, funny and original."
As a playwright and actor, Tim brings over 17 years of theatre experience to his storytelling, including appearances at the Orlando, Edmonton, and San Francisco Fringe Festivals, Fresno's Rogue Festival, the Bay Area Storytelling Festival, and the Stitching Stars Storytelling Festival in Athens, Georgia. For ten years, he was in the mainstage company of BATS Improv, one of San Francisco's most popular improvisation troupes.
Other stage credits include the original cast of Mary Zimmerman's The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci at the Lookingglass theatre and Dino Doesn't Live Here Any More for two seasons at the Lawrence Hall of Science.

Myspace.com/storiesbytim