Tommy Pico & Christopher Schmidt

Tommy Pico is the founder and editor in chief of birdsong, an antiracist/queer-positive collective, small press, and zine that publishes art and writing. He was a Queer/Art/Mentors inaugural fellow2013 Lambda Literary fellow in poetry, and has been published in BOMB, [PANK], and THEthe poetry blog. Originally from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation, he now lives in Brooklyn. In Jan. 2014 he released “Absent Mindr”– the first collection of poetry published as an APP for iOS mobile/tablet devices, developed by Verbal Visual.

Christopher Schmidt is the author of a book of poems, The Next in Line (2009), a chapbook, Thermae (2012) and a critical study, The Poetics of Waste (2014). He is an contributing editor at The Conversant and an Editor-at-Large for Essay Press. He has taught at the University of Michigan, Bard College, Hunter College, and is an Associate Professor at LaGuardia Community College. He is a virgo.