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. Her first full-length book, SOUVENIR, was released in February 2014 (WordTech Editions) and was a Willa Award Finalist in 2015. Her plays A HISTORY OF THE BODY and TINY FIRES were selected as Finalists for the Bay Area Playwright’s Festival. A HISTORY OF THE BODY was also commissioned by the East Bay Community Foundation and supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.  She has collaborated with Amara Tabor Smith and Deep Waters Dance Theater for the food-justice themed dance theater piece, Our Daily Bread. Her poems appear in numerous journals and anthologies such as Kartika Review, 580 Split, Lantern Review and Walang Hiya: Literature Taking Risks Toward Liberatory Practice, Check the Rhyme: An Anthology of Female Poets and Emcees and Poets (Lit Noire Press) and her chapbooks, the space between and Finding the Bones (Finishing Line Press). She’s been featured as a spoken word artist nationally, including at Stanford, Mt. Holyoke College, Portland State University, University of Miami and UC Santa Cruz.  Suzara received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing at Mills College.  An advocate for the intersection of arts and literacy, she teaches at San Francisco State University and other universities and colleges and leads workshops in poetry and performance for youth and adults. www.aimeesuzara.net

Denmo Ibrahim is an actor, playwright, screenwriter and short story author of Egyptian descent. She is a Sundance Theater Lab Finalist, a recipient of The Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Arts Award and National Endowment for the Arts Award. She has co-written seven ensemble-based projects, authored two full-length plays, and published a series of articles on theater, wellness, health and healing. Her devised work has toured to international festivals in Egypt, France and Germany. In the U.S., her work has been supported by New York Theatre Workshop, Under St. Marks, Playwrights’ Center, Noor Theatre, University of Oregon, Golden Thread Productions, EXIT Theater, Alter Theatre and Zawaya. Current commissions include Dream Thief, an immersive experience, a one-act adaptation from Brecht’s Fear and Misery of the Third Reich, an audio drama for Commonwealth Theatre Center.

As a playwright, she’s received a San Francisco Bay Area Critics Circle Award (SFBATCC) for “Best Original Script” for BABA and Rabbit Causes Dog at San Francisco Fringe Festival. As an actor, she has collaborated with playwrights Mac Wellman, Eric Ehn, Yusef El Guindi, Kristoffer Diaz, Thomas Bradshaw, Melinda Lopez, Dustin Chinn, and Tanya Saracho and has originated roles with composers Claudio Bohorquez, Rinde Eckert, and Carla Kihlstedt.  Regional credits include Noura (Marin Theatre Company), The Good Book (Berkeley Repertory), The Who & The What (Marin Theatre Company), A Thousand Splendid Suns (Seattle Rep, The Old Globe, American Conservatory of Theatre, Theatre Calgary), and Much Ado About Nothing (California Shakespeare Theatre). 

Denmo holds an MFA in Lecoq-based Actor Created Physical Theater from Naropa University and a BFA in Acting from Boston University. She is a proud member of Actors Equity Association, Dramatists Guild, and New Play Exchange. Denmo is a founding artistic director of Mugwumpin, a resident artist of Golden Thread, serves on the board of directors at Marin Theatre Company and is a founding member of the steering committee for MENATMA (Middle East North Africa Theater Makers Alliance). She lives in San Francisco and Brooklyn.