Flash Fiction

Flashers and Acentos present...
2-N-2:  New York Writers Say it in 2 Pages or 2 Poems

Tara Betts, a writer and educator, teaches creative writing at Rutgers University-New Brunswick and with the Dream Yard Project in the Bronx.  Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and journals including Essence, Callaloo, PMS poemsmemoirstory, OCHO, Spoken Word Revolution and Gathering Ground. She has performed her writing in the U.S., Cuba and England.  Her work has also been adapted for the stage in Steppenwolf Theatre's "Words on
Fire."

Rivka Solomon's "That Takes Ovaries!" and most recently "Fingernails Across the Chalkboard".

Aracelis Girmay writes poetry, fiction, & essays. A Cave Canem fellow & Acentos member, her work has been published in Ploughshares, Indiana Review, Callaloo, & Rattapallax, among other journals. She is the author of changing, changing & Teeth. Girmay teaches high school writing
workshops in the Bronx.

A rental lease in Bombay lasts for 11 months. So since 1990, which is when she moved to the city from her hometown Jamshedpur, Saloni Meghani has compulsively changed something major about her life every 11 months - job, career, house, city, relationship and, most importantly, her hairstyle. She digs Spider Solitaire.

Maaza Mengiste graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University, where she teaches. She is a recent Pushcart Prize nominee and her work has appeared in The Baltimore Review, Ninth Letter, and Lettre Internationale, among other journals. She's currently completing a novel that takes place during the Communist revolution in Ethiopia, and writing a collection of short stories based on musicians.

Marco Fernando Navarro was born and raised in Flushing, Queens. A graduate of New York University's Creative Writing, he was a New York Times Foundation Fellow. He is currently a lecturer in the Puerto Rican and Latin American Studies Department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He is so not tenured.

Born and raised in New York City to Puerto Rican parents, Maria Nieves chooses to live her life in the world yet tries to never lose sight of the housing projects where she was raised and the heritage she holds dear.  She has been blessed to meet many beautiful people on the journey and is grateful both to them and for them.  Maria is a co-organizer and collaborator with the Acentos Bronx Poetry, where she has been a featured reader, and has read her work at louder Mondays @ Bar13, Women Holla @ The Point in the Bronx, and A Gathering of the Tribes.

Jennifer Oh is a Columbia '04 MFA grad in fiction and is currently a lowly adjunct professor at the College of New Rochelle. Her most recent awards include the Summer 2005 Very Short Story Award from Glimmer Train Stories.

John Rodriguez writes and teaches in The Bronx.  He is a Ph.D. candidate at CUNY Graduate Center, and his poems have appeared in the collections Bum Rush the Page and Home Girls Make Some Noise: Hip Hop Feminism.

Trinidadian-born Samantha Thornhill attended Florida State University, where she earned her B.A. in Creative Writing, then later graduated from the University of Virginia with her Masters of Fine Arts in Poetry. Aside from coaching the Virginia Slam team for two years, Samantha was and still is an eternal member of Black on Black Rhyme and Cave Canem.  Samantha currently teaches poetry in the Drama division at the Juilliard School. She is the author of the young adult novel, Seventeen Seasons, which is forthcoming from Penguin Books.  She lives in Brooklyn.

Justin Torres has published stories in Tin House, Gulf Coast, The Greensboro Review and Sleeping Fish.

Born and bred in the Bronx, Sam "Fish" Vargas is a Nuyorican poet and educator who co-founded the Acentos Bronx Poetry Showcase in 2003.  He has performed his work at countless festivals and University programs throughout the nation.  In addition to his experience teaching poetry in prison through the Osbourne Association at Rikers' Island, Fish has facilitated teen poetry
workshops for numerous organizations in his home borough, including stints at the LIFE Foundation, Urban Word NYC, and the Citizens' Advice Bureau,where he currently serves as a director of youth literacy initiatives.

Rich Villar's written work appears in the journals OCHO, MiPOesias, Rattapallax 13 and Parse: Alchemy as well as the online journal RogueScholars.com. In 2004, he appeared with Team NYC-louder ARTS at the National Poetry Slam; in 2005, he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His work was commissioned for the stage in Actors Stock NYC's production of Eve Descending, in which he also performed.  He is an MFA candidate in poetry at Rutgers University-Newark and is the curator of Acentos, a Bronx-based reading series and cultural organization dedicated to Latino/a poets, which celebrated its fifth anniversary in March of 2008.