Associate Administrator
Jen Fitzgerald
Jen Fitzgerald is a poet and a native New Yorker who is currently working toward her MFA in Poetry at Lesley University. This past year, she single-handedly managed VIDA’s 2011 Count, pulling from her book-keeping background to ensure accuracy. Her work has appeared in Under Water New York. She is a freelance writer and community activist on Staten Island.
Managing Editor
Melinda Wilson
Melinda Wilson’s chapbook Amplexus was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2010, and her poems have appeared in Arsenic Lobster, Verse Daily, Diner, WOMB, Avatar Review, The Lumberyard, Agriculture Reader and elsewhere. She is Managing Editor and regular contributor of criticism for Coldfront Magazine (www.coldfrontmag.com). In 2005, Melinda was recipient of the Daniel Morin Poetry Prize judged by Charles Simic and Mekeel McBride at The University of New Hampshire. She completed an MFA in poetry at The New School in 2007 and currently lives and teaches in New York City.
Web and Graphics Consultant
Ana Božičević
Ana Božičević is the author of Stars of the Night Commute (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2009) and five chapbooks of poetry, most recently War on a Lunchbreak (Belladonna*, 2011). With Željko Mitić, she is the editor of The Day Lady Gaga Died: an Anthology of NYC Poetry of the 21st Century (in Serbian, Peti talas/The Fifth Wave, 2011). Her translations of Zvonko Karanović recently received a NYSCA grant. She works and studies at The Graduate Center, CUNY, where she edits Diane di Prima’s lectures for Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative and helps run the Annual Chapbook Festival. With Amy King, Ana co-edits esque and the PEN Poetry Series. Fresh poems and more at www.anabozicevic.com.
Communications Liaison and Interview Correspondent
Amy King
Amy King is the author of, most recently, I Want to Make You Safe (Litmus Press). She is currently preparing a book of interviews with the poet Ron Padgett, co-edits Esque Magazine and the PEN Poetry Series with Ana Bozicevic, and teachesEnglish and Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College. She has also conducted workshops at such places as the San Francisco State University Poetry Center, Summer Writing Program @ Naropa University, Slippery Rock University and Rhode Island School of Design. Readings, reviews and more @ amyking.org.
Her Kind: VIDA’s Blog (Coming soon)
Rosebud Ben-Oni, Writer & Editor
Rosebud Ben-Oni is a writer for New Perspectives Theater, which is producing her play Quimera on the Pedernales, and has been the recipient of a Horace Goldsmith Grant, given so she could complete her first novel, which deals with her experiences as a Jew of mixed race. She has had recent work in Slice Magazine, J Journal, Wreckage of Reason: An Anthology of Contemporary XXperimental Prose by Women Writers, Arts & Letters, Identity Envy— Wanting to be Who We Are Not, and The Texas Poetry Review. Recently produced plays include Owless of Santa Clara (Snorks and Pins, Roy Arias Studios, July 2010), Nikita (Shotgun Theater Festival, the Gene Frankel Theatre, Jan 2009 and Thespian Productions, Producer’s Club, May 2009); Nary a Bodega (Leah Ryan Benefit, Producer’s Club, November 2009); The Amaranthine Thread (Leah Ryan Benefit, Producer’s Club, November 2009 and Where Eagles Dare, February 2010). She is currently finishing her first novel, which is entitled The Imitation of Crying.
Arisa White, Writer & Editor
Arisa White is a Cave Canem fellow and holds an MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Author of two chapbooks,Disposition for Shininess (Factory Hollow Press, 2008) and Post Pardon (Mouthfeel Press, 2011), she was selected by the San Francisco Guardian for the 2010 Hot Pink List. She has received residencies, fellowships, and/or scholarships from Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Hedgebrook, Atlantic Center for the Arts, University of Western Michigan, Fine Arts Work Center, and Bread Loaf Writers’s Conference. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2005, her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and is featured on WORD with the Jessica Jones Quartet. She currently lives in Oakland, CA.
Director of Design
Nancy Smith
Nancy Smith is a graphic designer and writer. Her work has been published in Communication Arts, The Believer, Adbuster’s, and Seattle Weekly. Nancy received her MA in Media Studies from The New School and is currently pursuing an MFA in Writing at the University of San Francisco. She is the editor and publisher of Stumble magazine. (www.nancymadethis.com)
Grants Coordinator
Alyss Dixson
Alyss Dixson received a BA in Comparative Literature from Yale. She began her career as an intern for the Story Department for New Line Cinema, New York and later transferred to New Line’s West Coast office. She left New Line to work as an assistant and Script Coordinator on the film Money Talks, the debut film of director Brett Ratner. Afterward, Brett hired her to head up his new company, Rat Entertainment, based at New Line. For five years she acted as principal executive and producer at the company working on films like Rush Hour, Family Man, Paid in Full (Dimension/Miramax) and as an associate producer on Double Take (Disney). Later, she joined Paramount Pictures as a Vice President of Production, Worldwide, and now writes and produces and consults for film and television. Writer Mollie Gregory featured Ms. Dixson in her book Women Who Run the Show (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). She is hard at work on her forthcoming debut novel, A Place Called Paradise.
New Media Administrator
Jojo Lazar
jojo Lazar was born in Washington, DC. She received a BA in three majors from Brandeis University and her MFA in creative writing from Lesley University. She is a Boston-based performance artist/vaude-villain known as “the burlesque poetess” as well as the tenor ukulele player in the circus band, “Walter Sickert & The Army of Broken Toys.” She is the host of “salon gone wrong: evenings of poetry & delinquency,” and has been creating and distributing a zine, “niblet” since 2004. In addition to tweetwenching she runs VIDA’s new tumblelog (blog): vidaweb.tumblr.com.
