Poetry Slam at the Cantab Lounge: 2011 Team Bios

The 2011 team was selected over a three-night, seven-round slam of the top twenty slammers in the Cantab Lounge. This August, they will will represent the home venue at the 2011 National Poetry Slam.

Presenting the 2011 Boston-Cantab Slam Team:

Hailing from Manchester, New Hampshire, Mckendy Fils-Aimé is a three-time competitor at the National Poetry Slam, representing Slam Free or Die (2008, 2010) and Worcester Poets' Asylum (2009) and was a finalist for the Boston Lizard Lounge poetry slam team. In January of 2011, he toured the country as part of a poetry quartet called No More Ribcage. Some of his work can be found literary journals such as Amoskeag, Radius, Smashcake, and Borderline.

Rachel McKibbens lives in upstate New York with her family & considers The Cantab her east coast poetry home. She is a New York Foundation For The Arts poetry fellow, the 2009 Women of the World Poetry Slam champion and the author of Pink Elephant (Cypher Books, 2009) Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including The American Poetry Journal, Monkey Bicycle, Wicked Alice and 580 Split. This is her ninth slam team.

April Ranger represented Boston Cantab at the Individual World Poetry Slam in 2009 and performed as a member of Boston Cantab’s National Slam team in 2008 and 2010. Her poetry has been published in *Off The Coast* and* Muzzle Magazine. *She will represent Cantab this fall at the Individual World Poetry Slam in Cleveland, Ohio. April is also a founding member of SOOP, a story-telling potluck based out of her home in Jamaica Plain.

In the past twelve months, Carrie Rudzinski has toured the United States three times, represented Boston Cantab at the Individual World Poetry Slam and the National Poetry Slam, had her first collection of work published by Bicycle Comics, and ranked 14th in the world at the 2011 Women Of The World Poetry Slam. In her spare time, she travels to other countries and sleeps in unusual places.

Maya Phillips is a native New Yorker. She is pursuing a degree in Writing, Literature, and Publishing at Emerson College in Boston. She was a member of Emerson’s 2010 and 2011 CUPSI teams and is the current curator and slammaster of Emerson College’s slam series. She splits her time between the Boston and New York poetry scenes. This is her first year attending NPS, and she's honored to be a member of the home team.

Simone Beaubien, SlamMaster of the Boston Poetry Slam at the Cantab Lounge since 2004, serves as performance and strategy coach for the 2011 Cantab Slam Team. Veteran of seven Cantab teams since 2001, including the 2008 National Poetry Slam Finalists, she's also worked with members of the 2008 and 2009 Emerson College slam teams (semi-finalists and finalists at CUPSI, respectively), and members of 2009's debut Brandeis University Slam Team (also semi-finalists at CUPSI). This year Simone will also operate as Host City Director for the National Poetry Slam.

Brian S. Ellis, four-year veteran of the Cantab Slam Team, will operate as co-coach for the Cantab Slam Team this year. Since the publication of his first book with Write Bloody in 2008, Brian has toured to support his work with performance and readings. He won a second publication opportunity with Write Bloody in 2010 and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize twice. Brian was also a member of the 2008 Cantab Slam Team, who reached the Finals Stage at the National Poetry Slam that year.

You can see the team onstage every Wednesday at the Cantab Lounge, or check their schedule of appearances. To book the team to perform at your venue or event, email cantab@slamnews.com.

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