Aimee Suzara is a Filipino-American poet, playwright, and performer whose mission is to create poetic and theatrical work about race, gender, and the body to provoke dialogue and social change. As a playwright, her new work THE REAL SAPPHO was commissioned by Cutting  Ball Theater and awarded by the Kenneth Rainnin Foundation New Works fund and National Endowment for the Arts, and TINY FIRES was selected for Custom Made Theater’s Undiscovered Works Festival and will have its World Premiere in February 2023. Her plays A HISTORY OF THE BODY and TINY FIRES were selected as Finalists for the Bay Area Playwright’s Festival and she was a multi-year member of the Playground Writing Pool at the Berkeley Repertory Theater. Her work has been supported by YBCAway Award, National Endowment for the Arts; selected for the One Minute Play Festival, APAture, and the Utah Arts Festival, Women’s Theater Festival, O! Miami Festival, Instant Plays at Whitman College; and staged at the Berkeley Repertory Theater, CounterPULSE, Pangea Theater (MN), among many others. She has collaborated with dance theater projects such as Amara Tabor Smith and Deep Waters Dance Theater for the food-justice themed Our Daily Bread and with Ramon Alayo’s Alayo Dance Theater for the bilingual piece Manos de Mujeres. Her poetry book SOUVENIR (2014) was a Willa Award Finalist, and her poems appear in poets.org, numerous journals and anthologies such as Kartika Review, 580 Split, Lantern Review, two Lockhorn Press anthologies, and her chapbooks, the space between and Finding the Bones. Her fiction and articles have been published at Positively Filipino, the California Language Association Journal (CLAJ), Popsugar’s family vertical and others.  She’s been featured as a spoken word artist nationally. Suzara was selected as a resident at the Atlantic Center for the Arts (theater), A Room of Her Own Foundation residency (poetry, performance), and as a participate in several VONA (Voices of Her Arts Foundation) programs; she has been a guest artist/instructor at Interdisciplinary Writer’s Lab, Las Hociconx, Salem College, University of Washington, and more.   Suzara received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing at Mills College.  An advocate for the intersection of arts and social justice, she teaches at San Francisco State University and has led programs in poetry and performance since 2001. www.aimeesuzara.net

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Shorter Bio (150 words)

Aimee Suzara is a Filipino-American poet, playwright, and interdisciplinary performer based in Oakland, CA. Her book SOUVENIR (2014) was a Willa Award Finalist; poems and prose appear in publications such as Kartika Review, Lantern Review, Orion Magazine, Raising Mothers, and Popsugar. She has been invited to universities, conferences and festivals such as O! Miami, Utah Arts Festival, and the A/PA Institute at NYU. Her play THE REAL SAPPHO was awarded the Kenneth Rainin Foundation New Works and she has been awarded by YBCAway, A Room of Her Own Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She has collaborated with Deep Waters Dance Theater, Alayo Dance Theater, and a spoken word opera with Grammy-Award-winning Kronos Quartet. Currently a Fellow with Poetry and the Senses at UC Berkeley, Suzara teaches at San Francisco State University and is a writing coach through her business, Wild Tongues. She received her M.F.A. at Mills College.

Shortest Bio (50 Words)

Filipino-American poet, playwright, performer Aimee Suzara released her debut poetry book, SOUVENIR in 2014. A YBCAway awardee, her work has been presented nationally; selected for the Utah Arts Festival, One Minute Play Festival, United States of Asian America; and supported by the National Endowment for the Arts among other grantors.