2023 Debut Poets

Karen Garrabrant/aka Karen G. is co-founded C/literati, a womxn/queer/gender outlaw open no mic. She is a founding board member of Grrl’s Rock Camp ATL & slam manager of the Art Amok Slam. She has operated as a poet & organizer in Atlanta for 20 plus years. She has been a clock holder, score keeper, MC, bout manager, tournament director & PSI secretary, with a streak of attending every big event from 2004-2017, except for one. 

Karen loves editing & coaching poetry. She is stepping away from organizing, and now is embracing her own poems again. They are  made possible by Billy Tuggle, Tara Hardy, Mags Down,Gia Kagan-Trenchard, Adam Stone, Theresa Davis, Marty McConnell, Scott Woods, Louise Robertson, Daryl Funn & Ophelia Rising & others as well as the spaces they create & hold for communities. 

She writes about love, grief, loss, and experiences that the late Gabrielle Bouliane described as “all of this is true, none of this is real.”  Karen is famous for hugs & being a loud cheerleader because life is short. Punk is her gender, Q is her sexuality, she answers to she/they pronouns. She came out in DC & the Riot Grrl era, so DIY & Fugazi inform her foundation. Reach out & she will reach back.

Instagram: @kgarrab

Kimberlee Adonna writes and reads on virtual screens, but feels most at home with paper, ballpoint pens, and books she can touch and sniff.  She takes a stab at cellphone photography in deep nature and in cities, atop boulders overlooking valleys, beneath mushrooms’ gills on a forest floor, and behind the art and machinery of humanity.

Kim’s poetry has been published in We’Moon, Malpaís Review, BOMBFIRE, and Fixed and Free Poetry Quarterly.  Her oral storytelling has gained audience accolades at DimeStories open mics & showcases. 

An adoring fan of zines, she self-published Yes, With Mayo; Toil; and Clot: Moving on when you can’t get up. Two erotica zines have also been in small circulation: Superhero Huge and I Would Lay You Down and Give You Everything. 

After five decades of writing, she is working on her first poetry and photography collection, with kind and keen guidance from Marissa Prada at Read or Green Books.

Kim works as a speech-language pathologist in vista-rich New Mexico, USA, but dreams of someday returning to the once-Queen-owned mute swans of the lively East London canals. 

Marcos Cervantes III is a father, adventurer, information consultant, poet, photographer, certified trauma informed life coach and professional wearer of many hats. 

A true creative originally from New Orleans and growing up in Dallas he has always been right brain led. 

His journey has led him through many experiences and given him a unique perspective on the millions of shades of grey in being human.

IG @lifejuggernaut

Tabatha Adams was birthed in a city of  art, surrounded by nothing more than the image of motivation. Her passion for writing came before she was allowed to express herself, hiding poetry in the back of note books she learned how to cope with the violence behind a gate. 

Child molestation, single parent homes, and addiction have been the tools given to create beauty out of all her broken pieces. You can find the truths to these subjects in her poems, but it's in her spoken word that she truly comes alive, knitting tragedies into the voice of comfort. 

You can find her on the stages of Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Art at the sound, Word is write, Bronx art and fun hub , Art at the basin and has also been a featured poet at the NYC poetry festival 2022.

Her publishing can be found with Bronx Council of the Arts, Turning Corners, as well as other anthologies. Her education/training in writing has come from multiple platforms including Gotham Writers, Nuyorican Poets, and NYPL workshops such as Island and Kingsbridge Writers.    

Her passion is food, street photography, family and the freedom of self expression.

Instagram: Tab_001Poetry

Alexis G. Garcia aka Vexed Lex is a queer Hispanic writer from East Harlem, NY. She graduated from Manhattanville College in 2017 where she majored in English with a concentration in Creative and Professional Writing, and minored in Criminal Law. Currently, she works as a calendar clerk and paralegal at a personal injury law firm in Midtown.

Her interest in law began in the eleventh grade when she joined and became the Captain of her school’s Moot Court/Mock Trial team. Her passion for writing has been with her since as early as the first grade where she stapled pieces of construction paper together and created picture books which eventually transitioned into filling up spiral and composition notebooks with fiction stories. Poetry found her in the tenth grade where she took a chance and joined Writers’ Collective, a weekly after-school program that provided a safe space for her to dive into the world of poetry and opened her eyes to being able to perform her work in front of crowds, in spite of her nagging social anxiety.

When Covid-19 caused the world to shut down in 2020, she made it her mission to use that time to get more serious about having more of her work published. Since then, her poetry has been published in several anthologies and literary magazines. She has performed her poetry with the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Barbed Wire Open Mic Series, Nomadic Press, the Word is Write and other virtual open mics, in addition to in-person open mics at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe & Bronx Music Heritage Center. Her work discusses mental health, self-reflection, love and has covered other topics such as queer identity, sexual harassment and abortion. 

Alexis has always had dreams of publishing her own books, both poetry & novels. This book is just the beginning. She is contemplating going to law school and, one day, becoming a judge. 

For now, she continues to put her energy into her writing, managing her mental health & becoming more comfortable with performing at in-person events.

Instagram: @vexedlexpoetry   

Facebook: @VexedLex  

Website: officialvexedlex.com