Dana Sink lives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania with his wife, daughter, two cats, and a dog. He creates allegorical animations that draw inspiration from the people and objects around him. His paintings, films, and animations have been seen in galleries and museums internationally. His achievements include several group and independent exhibitions and being featured in various articles and publications. His work has recently screened at Ann Arbor International Film Festival and at Ottawa International Animation Festival

As a poet and budding documentarian, Michelle loves the idea of combining the two mediums, especially because the two complement one another so well. Many of her films are poetic, and many poems are cinematic/visual.

Rhea Bozzacchi earned their BA in Film & Video at Columbia College Chicago. They realized they wanted to be a filmmaker the day their aunt high-kicked their dad in the face, but they’ll explain that another time. Their films have screened at Outfest, TWIST, and Chicago REEL Shorts Festival. Day by day in Los Angeles, they can be found working as a video editor to survive financially, playing drums to survive mentally, and humming Alanis Morrisette to survive emotionally.

Eryka Dellenbach works with the body and film as a many-hats filmmaker, choreographer and performer. Inspired as a girl by her hunter-father's practice of hiding in trees, she privately cultivated the ability to disappear in order to observe flora and fauna, seeding her movement studies. Her current research focuses on relationships between women, the limbic system and its connection to traumatic experience and systems of consent, all of she has synthesized in her longterm performance project Make the Brutal Tender in collaboration with embodied sound artist Hanna Elliott (HOGG). Eryka earned a bachelors degree in anthropology from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a masters in film from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She works as an instructor of 16mm filmmaking at MONO NO AWARE, performance documentarian, performer and contracted worker.

Homa Zarghamee is a professor of economics at Barnard College and affiliate scholar at Columbia University's Center for Psychoanalytic Training.

Keira Sultan is a Director and Editor based in Brooklyn. After studying Fine Arts at Bates College, she decided to merge her love of storytelling and visual arts through filmmaking. Her work often explores themes of time, memory and intergenerational relationships, through an interweaving of digital and film footage. Her upcoming films include a continuation of a documentary her mom started in the 90s about a Philly boxing gym, and a short film exploring her Grandmother’s life through the lens of her artwork.

Christine Sloan Stoddard is a Salvadoran-American author, artist, and film/theatre professional who lives in Brooklyn. Her books include Desert Fox by the Sea, Belladonna Magic, Water for the Cactus Woman, and other titles. She co-edited Her Plumage, an anthology by Quail Bell Magazine, her literary journal, with Gretchen Gales. She is a 2020 Table Work Press playwriting competition winner and the artist-in-residence at HeartShare Human Services of New York. Her debut novelette, Naomi & The Reckoning, will be released from Finishing Line Press in June 2020.

In an interview, Lucille Clifton once said poetry “is the… human heart speaking.” That’s what captures Teri in art: poetry, film, or music—its heart. Teri

Jenifer Browne Lawrence is the author of Grayling (Perugia Press), and One Hundred Steps from Shore (Blue Begonia Press). Awards include the Perugia Press Prize, the Orlando Poetry Prize, and the James Hearst Poetry Prize. Her work appears in Bracken, Cincinnati Review, The Coachella Review, Los Angeles Review, Narrative, North American Review, and elsewhere. Say hello on twitter @JeniferBrowne

Kondo Heller is a poet that makes experimental films. She is based in London and is studying Creative Writing at the University of Oxford. Her latest poetry film, 'hooded violets' was selected for screening at the 2019 Zebra Poetry Film Festival in Berlin.

Her film practise is deeply embedded in her poetic process as she breaks lines of linear time, layers it with sounds and images to evoke strong imagery and preserve the multiple stories and narratives in different time frames.

You can follow Kondo's artistic archive here @howtogrowaflower

Eleanor D. Bellamy is an actress and filmmaker based in London. She scrabbles poetry on her commutes and daydreams about dusty Angeleno lemon trees. Her autodidact work as a filmmaker grows from a need to communicate story and to capture God’s choreography in daily life. Bellamy graduated from Barnard College with a Bachelor of Arts in Music. She turned thespian at HB Studio and Rose Bruford College.

Erika is a poet and co-founding editor of A Velvet Giant, a genreless literary journal. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Hotel Amerika, Hobart, Juked, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Peach Mag, and elsewhere. She was awarded a residency to attend Art Farm Nebraska, works in Manhattan as an editorial assistant, and lives in Brooklyn with her pet cat, Willa. Find more here.

Jane was born in Rustington, West Sussex, UK. Trained as a typographer by the University of Reading, England, Jane Glennie practiced for many years as a jobbing freelance designer. Moving closer towards contemporary art, she took her Masters Degree in Art & Space at Kingston University, London, with Distinction. She creates installations incorporating film and publications. A key technique in her films is to take hundreds of photographs, which are edited and sequenced into rapid ‘flicker films’ and combine them with composite soundtracks. Films may exist on their own, or may become part of installations that they are projected into. Bringing her background in design and art together, and along with artist Robert Good, she crowdfunded the publication of ‘A New Dictionary of Art’ – a conceptual book that attempts to tackle the question of what is art through 3,000 definitions of a single word. Jane Glennie’s films have been shown by PoetryFilm at the Hackney Picturehouse and Reykjavik, Iceland; in Art Language Location in Cambridge, England; and on Visual Container TV as part of the 29th Festival Les Instants Vidéo, La Friche La Belle De Mai, Marseille, France.

Brittani Sonnenberg enjoys multiple creative dalliances: poetry, fiction writing, journalism, and performance. Her nonfiction has appeared in publications like Time Magazine, NPR, Austin Monthly, TinHouse.com and Tribeza. Her fiction has been published in places like Ploughshares, the O'Henry Prize Series, and Short Fiction. Her novel, Home Leave, was selected as an Editor's Choice by the New York Times. She serves as a visiting lecturer for Hong Kong University's MFA Program, and is based in Austin, Texas.

Christina Ellsberg is a founding member of the VPP team and proudly returning for their fourth year as a filmmaker. Christina studied medical anthropology at Barnard College, and social ethics at Union Theological Seminary, and will begin doctoral work on nuclear weapons policy at Yale in the fall. Christina’s life is largely devoted to the care and study of animals, repetitious handicrafts, and the prevention of nuclear war.

Raised in six countries across four continents, Pulkit Datta’s filmmaking interests are inherently cross-cultural. A NYU alum, he started his career assisting director Mira Nair and has since worked on a wide range of international projects. He has worked on the creative development and production of scripted films, feature documentaries, commercials, music videos, short films, and multimedia campaigns. His films have screened at festivals such as, Toronto, Tribeca, Atlanta, Cinequest, and New Filmmakers New York. Pulkit is active in the filmmaking community as an organizer and programmer for various film festivals, film screening events, and development workshops. Pulkit is an alum of development programs at IFP, Cine Qua Non Lab, NFDC Film Bazaar, and producing fellowships at Center for Asian American Media, and Impact Partners.

Michael Frazier is a poet and high school teacher in Kanazawa, Japan. He received his BA from Gallatin at New York University, where he was the 2017 poet commencement speaker and a co-champion of the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational. He has performed at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Nuyorican Poets Café and the Gallatin Arts Festival, among other venues. A reader for the Adroit Journal and an alumnus of the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Frazier has poems published or forthcoming in Construction, the Visible Poetry Project, Day One, the Speakeasy Project and elsewhere.

Meredith Morran is a writer and filmmaker based in New York. Her work has been performed and screened at festivals including SXSW, Electronic Literature Organization Conference + Media Arts Festival, Los Angeles Film Festival, Lady Filmmakers Film Festival and the Pitch Her Productions’ Riveter Series. She is a graduate of Brown University, where she received degrees in Modern Culture and Media & Literary Arts. She currently works as Triple Canopy’s Associate Video Producer.

Ayesha Raees identifies herself as a hybrid creating hybrid art through hybrid forms. She cultivates relationships between the word and the image through theatrical performance, filmic visual imagery, and documentary photography. Raees was previously 2018-2019's

Margins Fellow at the Asian American Writers' Workshop and currently resides between Lahore, Pakistan and New York City.

www.ayesharaees.com

Brendan Bonsack likes to tell stories and make stuff. Whether by the medium of film, music, poetry, spoken word or photograhpy, his work is interested in the nuances of human experience, history and memory, and the personal as political.

www.BrendanBonsack.com

AKA Yokna Patofa. So far she directed two sci-fi films (Illuminations, DUAL CITY). Currently she is working as a dramaturg in Montreal theatrical director Marie Brassard's new piece "Violence" , as a runner in decoy;, the project with Ryusuke Yamai.

Honorable mention award on "Canon new cosmos of photography 2013" for "Ascension River", Nippon Visions jury award special mention for "DUAL CITY"

Shin Yu Pai is a poet, cross-media artist, and curator for the collaborative global exploration project Atlas Obscura. Her poetic origins inform an artistic style that has grown beyond the written word—manifesting in photography, installation and public art, cross-disciplinary collaborations, and sound. She served as the fourth poet laureate of the City of Redmond. Her books include, Aux Arcs (La Alameda, 2013), Adamantine (White Pine, 2010), Sightings (1913 Press, 2007), and Equivalence (La Alameda, 2003). In March 2020, Entre Rios books published Ensō, a 20-year survey of her work across disciplines.

NYU grad Andrea Ashton is an ex-Californian (Bay Area born and raised), current New Yorker, wife, mom, and filmmaker. Her shorts and pilots have garnered dozens of film festival awards, critical love, and thousands of YouTube views, even an archive in the Academy. Her latest pilot, “Rockaway,” a comedic narrative about cold-water surfers, kicked off its festival run at Cinequest, Northern California’s premiere arts festival. She’s been a second-rounder for both Sundance and Film Independent Labs and recently completed NYWIFT’s From Script to Pre-Production Lab with “When Joy Fell”, a dark romantic comedy feature screenplay she wrote and will direct, one of only eight projects selected.

Viktoria I.V. King is a multi-ethnic award-winning British- American Director, Writer and Producer. She's directed & produced content (Theatre, Commercials & Film) both in the UK and the US. She was a finalist for the 2019 ABC Directors Showcase. Her films have been selected in over 50 international film festivals with over 20 awards being singled out as Best Director.

Viktoria's work and creative eye is greatly influenced by her international background. As a largely visual director, she focuses on narratives about connection, identity and truth with social & political relevant undertones.

Emma McVicar lives in Cambridge, MA with her cat, Munchie. She has been making videos since she was in 5th grade, and is best known for her early hits, including "The 13 O'Clock News", "Extreme Nerd Makeover", and a unique interpretation of Shakira's "She Wolf" video. She currently works for a tech company, producing videos for online courses, but still loves making her own videos on the side. She doesn't take herself too seriously and has always loved making things that make people smile (often including fake mustaches). Film is her first love, and VPP has been an amazing challenge and incredibly joyful experience.

Sarah Tremlett MPhil, FRSA, SWIP is a writer, artist, theorist and poetry filmmaker; she is co-director of Liberated Words CIC Poetry Film festival and events, and editor of Liberated Words online. Her commissioned publication The Poetics of Poetry Film by Intellect Books will be published in October 2020. She has had her work screened and given talks on poetry film worldwide, and judged at a number of festivals, including Liberated Words, Newlyn PZ Film Festival, and Light Up Poole. With a long-standing relationship with VideoBardo, Buenos Aires, she was instrumental in the latest talk by Marisol Bellusci at Bristol Poetry Institute, co-hosted by Dr Rebecca Kosick of Bristol Poetry Institute. Her latest curated touring screenings include Uprooted (with films on the refugee crisis) which was part of REELpoetry festival, Houston; and Poetry Films for the Environment with Liberated Words co-director, poet Lucy English for LYRA Poetry Festival 2020.

Irit Reinheimer is a filmmaker based in Philadelphia. She makes short, experimental films that examine themes of loss and inheritance through a queer lens. She constructs her films using her late father's 8mm home movies, incorporating rotoscoping, archival materials, and new footage. Her work has screened nationally and internationally. Irit is currently an MFA candidate at Image Text Ithaca.

Nico Amador is a poet, community organizer and facilitator based in Vermont by way of San Diego and Philadelphia. His poems have appeared in Bettering American Poetry, Vol 3., the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, Hypertext Review, Poets Reading the News, Poet Lore, Bedfellows, and elsewhere. His chapbook, Flower Wars, was selected as the winner of the Anzaldúa Poetry Prize and was published by Newfound Press in 2017.

Cuir artist, animator and filmmaker. She is interested in poetic experimentation through drawing, comics and animation. Working with the body, she asks questions about gender, sexual identity, intimacy and memory.

Julene Tripp Weaver, a native New Yorker, is a psychotherapist and writer in Seattle. Her book, truth be bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS, was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and won the Bisexual Book Award

Avishkar Chhetri is an Illustrator and Animator, he utilises live-action film, 3D and 2D animation. He was born in Pokhara Nepal and grew up in West London. He gained a BA (Hons) from the University of West London and a MA in Animation from the Royal College of Art. He now focuses on combining telling localism within communities and refugees, genres and mediums to create innovative stories.