Room Project runs collectively on part-time paid labor, volunteer hours, and regular input by members and the steering committee. Meet the folks who serve our literary + arts community.
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S T A F F
K E L S E Y R O N A N - director
Kelsey Ronan (she/her) grew up in Flint, Michigan. Her work has appeared in Lit Hub, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Kenyon Review and elsewhere. She is the author of the novel Chevy in the Hole (Holt), an intergenerational story of two Flint families from the Sit-Down Strike to the ongoing water crisis. When not writing, she fosters special needs cats she finds in alleys. She serves as Room Project's Operations Director. // ronan@roomproject.org
J A S S M I N E P A R K S - member meeting facilitator
Jassmine Parks (she/her) is a spoken word poet and slam champion from Detroit. Her work examines the resiliency of the Black feminine experience and intergenerational trauma. She attempts to explore, heal, and disrupt unhealthy cycles at both personal and systemic levels ranging from abuse to mass incarceration. Parks, also a dedicated educator, serves as the lead teaching artist of InsideOut Literary Arts. She believes in the power of language to reflect on past experiences, build agency, and activate healing. She has been awarded fellowships from Kresge, InsideOut and Room Project. Her work has been published with SlamFind and All Def Poetry.
A F A R I N A L L A B A K H S H I Z A D E H - intern
Afarin Allabakhshizadeh (they/them) is a queer and non-binary fiction writer who was born in the Khūzestān Province of Iran and raised in Texas. They graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing from the Helen Zell Writers' Program. // intern@roomproject.org
B R I D G E T T E B R A D O S - intern
Bridgette Brados (she/they) was born and raised in the Sonoran desert of Arizona. She recently earned her MFA in poetry from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program. When she’s not writing, you can find her creating with her hands; she particularly enjoys textile arts, relief printmaking, comics, and gardening. Bridgette is passionate about giving back to the community through education. She has taught classes on organic gardening, sex education, and creative writing. // intern@roomproject.org
STEERING COMMITTEE
Room Project doesn’t have the budget to support a full-time staff with living wages, but we believe in intersectionality, inclusivity, and foregrounding the voices of BIPOC and LGBTQ+. It’s essential that we have an intersectional group at the table guiding decisions and growing Room Project with intention. Our steering committee makes a one-year commitment to design programs, explore new partnerships, and continue the conversation around mission and growth.
A L I S E A L O U S I
Alise Alousi’s work has appeared in several journals and anthologies including most recently in the Detroit Free Press. She is a recipient of fellowships to the Fine Arts Work Center and Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing as well as a 2019 Kresge Literary Arts Fellowship and a 2015 Knight Arts Challenge Detroit award. Her poetry can be found in R&R Press’ inaugural issue as well as in a new anthology of Arabic love poems edited by Hala Alyan and Zeina Hashem Beck.
M I C H A E L A A Y E R S
Michaela Ayers, a social justice facilitator turned entrepreneur, is revolutionizing the way individuals, organizations, and communities think about diversity, equity, and inclusion. Michaela is the founder of Nourish, a social impact organization that is advancing anti-racist education through experiential learning and human connection. A Nebraska native and new Detroiter, when Michaela isn’t facilitating workshops she is an interdisciplinary artist and art historian. By blending different modes of creativity, Michaela explores the themes of identity, history, and storytelling through shapes, colors, and symbols. She is passionate about creativity, conversations, and most importantly, cookies.
A N N A C L A R K
Anna Clark graduated from Warren Wilson College's MFA program, where she focused on fiction, and these days, she's part of the nonfiction faculty in Alma College's MFA program. Anna is a ProPublica journalist and the author of The Poisoned City: Flint's Water and the American Urban Tragedy. She also edited A Detroit Anthology and wrote a small book about the literary history of the Great Lakes State. She has been a Fulbright fellow in creative writing in Kenya and a Knight-Wallace fellow in journalism at the University of Michigan. She is also a longtime leader of writing and improv theater workshops in prisons, detention centers, high schools, libraries, and beyond.
C Y R A H D A R D A S - Windows Curator 2022
Cyrah Dardas is a Queer, ritual artist and care worker living in Detroit /Waawiyaatanong MI. Dardas uses her art practice as a tool in remembering the forgotten networks between humans and the earth for the purpose of regulation and healing across species to restore a collective ecological body and heal. She is informed by her work in childcare, her stewardship of land and as a grower of food, as a collaborator with youth, as a member of an artist cooperative, as a ceremonialist, as a space maker, and through her work with natural fibers, pigments and paint. She is the Co- founder of Paper Street Press, a press and distribution network producing collaborative 2D zines that highlight the artistic practices of QTBIPOC (Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, People of Color) and Disabled BIPOC artists, and the lead teaching artist at People in Education.
L I A N A J A H A N I M A M
Liana Jahan Imam is an American writer raised in southeast Michigan and finished in Brooklyn. She holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Montana and, now based in Detroit, facilitates writing workshops for all ages, hosts a discursive meetup on hybrid poetics, and works on a longterm project around familial legacy and inheritance. You can visit her at lianajimam.com.
L A S H A U N P H O E N I X M O O R E
La Shaun phoenix Moore is a Detroit-based vocalist, spoken word artist, activist, culture creator and wife. Moore’s interdisciplinary work is infused with her love for the city of Detroit, hip-hop, God, social justice and her black momma. She is currently working on her first memoir exploring the complexities of the Mother Wound and how it is rooted in her immediate family.
B R I T T A N Y R O G E R S
Brittany Rogers is a poet, mother, educator, and native Detroiter. She has work published or forthcoming in Mississippi Review, Vinyl Poetry and Prose, The Offing, Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora and Tinderbox Poetry. Her work has been anthologized in “The BreakBeat Poets: Black Girl Magic” and “Best of the Net”. Brittany is a fellow of VONA, The Watering Hole, Poetry Incubator, and Pink Door Writing Retreat. She is Editor in Chief for Muzzle Magazine and a MFA candidate and Blackburn Fellow at Randolph College.
The committee meets monthly, with a summer fallow period. If you’re interested in joining the steering committee, please reach out to Kelsey at ronan@roomproject.
C H R I S T I N L E E - founder
Christin Lee (she/her) is a writer and organizer from Los Angeles. She received an MLitt in Writing from the University of Glasgow, worked as an art consultant in Los Angeles for five years, and then completed an MFA from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program. Christin was the recipient of the Grace Paley Fiction Fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center, the U-M Henfield Prize in Fiction, the Farrar Memorial Playwriting Grant at U-M, and a Strange Foundation Residency in 2019. She opened Room Project in June 2018 and served as the director until June 2022. // lee@roomproject.org