Nikki Patin – Founder Surviving the Mic, Community Engagement Director for CAASE

Featured in the Guardian, Chicago Tribune and on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, poet and spoken word artist Nikki Patin has been writing, performing, educating and community organizing for almost 15 years.

She has taught hundreds of spoken word and storytelling workshops and is a passionate believer in the power of art to create social change and the importance of creating safe spaces that are also brave spaces. A community organizer at the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, Nikki was voted one of 30 under 30 most influential LGBTQ people in Chicago by Windy City Times and took the gold medal in the 2006 Gay Games International LGBT poetry slam. She holds an MFA in Creative Non-Fiction from the University of Southern Maine. Alongside Anne K. Ream and Marline Johnson, Nikki will facilitate and co-lead “I Am Rural America,” an advocacy poetry writing workshop.