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Prescott College
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Shailja Patel - Biography
The first South Asian woman to make an impact on the national slam poetry scene, Shailja Patel was 2001 Lambda Slam Champion, Santa Cruz Slam 2000 Champion and Team Santa Cruz Anchor at the National Slam Championships 2000. She was a featured panelist and guest poet at the National Youth Slam Championships 2001. Her workshop, "How Big Is Your Voice?" packed a room to overflow capacity and garnered the highest attendance of any workshop at the 2001 National Poetry Slam in Seattle. She has appeared at slams, festivals and conferences across North America.
Recent highly-acclaimed performances include the 15th anniversary celebration of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, the 2002 National Conference of Asian and Pacific Islander Law Students at UC Berkeley (where she received a standing ovation), and the Radical Performance Fest (a Bay Area Critics Choice Selection). Her words, aired on the National Radio Project, KPFA (Flashpoints, APEX Express, Hard Knocks Radio) and KPOO, have generated responses from activists and academics worldwide.
Shailja's work appears in Awaaz (London), Trikone Magazine, India Currents, Sow's Ear Poetry Review, Emily Dickinson Award Anthology, From Porn to Poetry: Clean Sheets Celebrates The Erotic Mind, Short North Gazette, the feature film, Buzz Me In, and the CD, Best of the Berkeley Slam Poets. Her poems were featured in the curriculum for June Jordan's Poetry For The People program at UC Berkeley in 2002, and have been used in colleges, high schools and workshops across the country. Awards include an Outwrite 1999 Poetry Prize and a Sacramento Public Library Poetry Prize. She was semifinalist for the 2000 Emily Dickinson Award and the 2000 Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize. She is a recipient of a Serpent Source Foundation For Women Artists Grant and a Voices Of Our Nations Arts Foundation Poetry Scholarship.
Born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya, Shailja read Economics and Politics at the University of York, England, and trained as a chartered accountant in London. She is also an internationally certified yoga teacher, and incorporates principles of yoga into many of her performances and workshops. When she's not performing, writing, or teaching, Shailja manages Finance and Operations for the Shinnyo-En Foundation in San Francisco.