Jurors
Patrick Sylvain - Poetry Juror
Patrick Sylvain is a Haitian-American poet, writer, photographer, social and literary critic who has published widely on Haitian, Haitian diaspora culture, politics, language, and religion. He is the author of several poetry books in English and Haitian, and his poems have been nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize. He is published in several anthologies, academic journals, books, magazines and reviews including: African American Review, Agni, American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Chicago Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Transition, and The Caribbean Writer. Sylvain has degrees from the University of Massachusetts (B.A.), Harvard University (Ed.M.), and Boston University (MFA). Sylvain is a lecturer at Brown University’s Africana Studies as well as BrandeisUniversity’s AAAS. He is also the Shirle Dorothy Robbins Creative Writing Prize Fellow at Brandeis University where he is completing his PhD in English. Sylvain’s poetry chapbook, Underworlds, is published by Central Square Press (2018). Sylvain is a featured poet on Benjamin Boone’s Poetry and Jazz CD The Poets are Gathering (Oct 2020). His new bilingual poetry collection Unfinished Dreams /Rèv San Bout will be published by JEBCA Editions (October 2021). He is the leading author of the forthcoming book Education Across Borders: Immigration, Race, and Identity in the Classroom to be published by Beacon Press (February 2022).
Vanessa Leroy - Photography Juror
Vanessa Leroy (b. 1996) is a photographer from Waltham, Massachusetts. She is currently completing her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She remains on the hunt for new ways of seeing, remembering, and altering the world through photography. She is drawn to image-making because of the power it holds to create nuanced representation for marginalized people and uplift their stories. She sees photography as a tool for social justice, and with it she hopes to create worlds that people feel as though they can enter and draw from, as well as provide a look into an experience that they may not personally recognize.
Her work has been featured in The Washington Post, NPR, and exhibited at Gallery Kayafas in Boston, MA.