Tatyana Brown is currently ranked fourth in the world of competitive performance poetry after participating in the 2011 Individual World Poetry Slam. She is a writer, educator, and community organizer based in San Francisco, and in addition to touring both coasts as a poet, she has talked teenagers into discovering the mountaintops of British Columbia (in part using Louise Gluck’s The Wild Iris), told stories to captivated Bay Area audiences, and sold instant literature ranging from short fiction to wedding vows as a street vending freelance writer in New York City. Most recently she has begun guest lecturing in university classrooms on the subject of poetry slam as a contemporary American literary tradition specifically, and the rich, vibrant, vital nature of American oral tradition more generally. Tatyana is also a co-host of The Oversocial Mofo Revue, a unique and continuously sold-out variety show in San Jose, along with nationally acclaimed poet David Perez, and she is also the founding director of The Lit Slam (www.thelitslam.com), a live audience-curated literary journal and showcase of some of America’s finest touring poetry talent.