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Award-winning poetry by established and emerging poets throughout the summer.
Celebrating Teen Poets
Featuring Shnayjaah Jeanty, Ayonna Sullivan, Alex Davis, Aniya Mardorf, and Maxanne Wallace-Segall
Hosted by Jason Schneiderman
2024 National Youth Poet Laureate Finalist Shnayjaah Jeanty studies Human Rights and Creative Writing at Columbia University. She is an Adroit Journal Summer Mentee, Scholastic Art and Writing Gold Medal Portfolio Winner, National Student Poet Semi-finalist, 3-time YoungArts Winner, Questbridge Scholar, and a really fast talker. She has an unhealthy addiction to Red Bull and The Vampire Diaries. Shnayjaah writes in hopes of building community joy and laughter. In the future, she plans to become a defense attorney (who still slams from time to time) and help reform the justice system.
Ayonna Sullivan is a self-made soon-to-be-mogul that does it all, hailing from the Lower East Side. She graduated from Gramercy Arts High School and is currently writing her first anthology, “A Piece of My Heart” while navigating her way through being a young entrepreneur. She earned a spot in being one of four poets on the 2021 Urban Word NYC Slam Team and hopes to continue to impact storytelling through the arts. Using film photography, dance, poetry, rap, comedy, and holistic health, she aims to leave behind a unique imprint on the world.
Alex Davis is an 11th-grade student who currently attends The Young Women's Leadership School of Queens, a high school focusing on women's empowerment and leadership. Alex has studied science for most of her high school and middle school years, participating in lab and computer research internships with organizations such as the American Museum of Natural History and LaGuardia Community College. Alex believes that science should be both a playground and a compass, guiding anyone through a world of endless curiosity and discovery.
Aniya Mardorf, a soon-to-be freshman at NYU Tisch School of The Arts, is majoring in collaborative arts, aiming to deepen her understanding of the arts. With a strong passion, she has engaged in internships, launched her own sticker business, and even crafted a custom internship with Wide Rainbow, a nonprofit focused on contemporary art education.
Maxanne Wallace-Segall has been building stories and worlds since she was four years old. She began exploring multiple writing styles from novels, to short stories, to plays, and by middle school she was writing and performing political poetry for her school community during Women’s History Month. She now writes regularly for her high-school newspaper, the Stuyvesant Spectator, about finding connection and empathy amidst global division and war, such as the Israel-Palestine conflict. She’s also been writing for Writopia’s camp newspaper, The Yearly Wricampian since she was ten, and will be an editor this summer. She’s won three gold keys from the Scholastic Award for her creative writing, and Best Delegate awards for her speeches and Best Position Paper for her writing at Model UN conferences. She is so excited to share her poetry at Bryant Park with other teen poets!
Hosted by:
Jason Schneiderman is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Hold Me Tight (Red Hen, 2020), and including the forthcoming Self Portrait of Icarus as a Country on Fire (Red Hen, 2024). He edited the anthology Queer: A Reader for Writers (Oxford UP 2016). His poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. His awards include the Emily Dickinson Award, the Shestack Award and a Fulbright Fellowship. He is longtime co-host of the podcast Painted Bride Quarterly Slush Pile and a guest host for The Slowdown. He is Professor of English at the Borough of Manhattan Community College and teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.