MEET THE TEAM!
From 2020 to 2022, the organizing team for the Boston Poetry Marathon included Bridget Eileen, Suzanne Mercury, Christina Liu, and Xtina Strong, along with many well-appreciated event volunteers including Chad Parenteau, Tom Daley, Gilmore Tamny, Donald Vincent, Andrew Peterson, and many other MCs, technical hosts, and special assistants. Suzanne and Bridget served as Artistic Co-Directors of the Boston Poetry Marathon for six years, from 2017-2022.
The Boston Poetry Marathon is an all-volunteer effort. If you are interested in volunteering to help organize the Boston Poetry Marathon, please send us an email!
Christina Liu – Organizer
fundraising, charitable organization liaison, email communications, community promotion, production coordinator, venue coordinator
Christina Liu’s parents escaped China’s Cultural Revolution, settling with her to live in NYC’s Chinatown. This backdrop informs much of her writing. She holds a BA in Writing, Literature, and Publishing and an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. Formerly an ESL counselor and translator, she is currently an academic advisor and writing instructor at Boston Architectural College. Her work is published in Dream International Quarterly, Phantasm, and featured on the CD, Spoken Live! (Arula Records).
Christina has been a member of Streetfeet Women since 2014, a non-profit writing and performance ensemble and performs with them regularly. Her poems, “Only,” and “I Am,” will be published in the upcoming Frequency Writers anthology, tentatively titled, Word in World. Recent readings include, since 2019: The Boston Poetry Marathon, The Boston Poetry Salon, Jamaica Plain’s Chapter and Verse, and the Lizard Lounge. In November, she was featured in Brockton Public Library’s “Voices of Diversity” program.
She dreams, in spare moments, of green places, rushing waters, and dumplings.
Xtina Strong – Organizer
graphic design, website design, social media, community promotion, production coordinator
Xtina Strong is a poet and graphic designer who lives in Vermont but is really ready to move out. Xtina has been a Boston Poetry Marathon organizer since 2020 and a participant in the BPM since it began.
She keeps forgetting to write up a bio for this section so someone else is writing it for her in the meantime, because she needs to get the credit she deserves for creating the poetry marathon thematic graphics each year. That sphinx bee hybrid was genius. Also genius: Xtina’s poetry. Make sure you read it.
Xtina also DJs “Lo-Fi Revolution (you can dance to)” on Wed 5-7 pm,and ReB Sun 11pm-1am on Royalton Community Radio royaltonradio.org/ and wfvr.org. Her website is: http://christinastrong.com/is/
Bridget Eileen – Organizer
communications, website, social media; artistic director (2017-2022): logistics, lead operations, schedules, meetings coordinator, fundraising, community promotion, volunteer coordinator, communications, website, social media, production manager
Bridget Eileen is a writer who lives in Rhode Island. She is a poet, blogger, political organizer, and modern pagan witch. Her main blogging endeavor is NotebookWitch.com (@NotebookWitch on most social media; @TheNotebookWitch on Instagram), a blog about modern witchcraft and witchery.
She runs two book clubs: the Boston Austen Book Club, a book club for Janeites, meeting on a quarterly basis; and the brand new Tori Amos Book Club, to tide herself and her fellow Ears With Feet over while Tori Amos’s tour is on break.
She received her undergraduate and graduate degrees in the great state of Maine. She has a Bachelor of Science in English Education with minors in Music and Women’s Studies, and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing with a concentration in Poetry. Her poetry has been published most recently in Can We Have Our Ball Back, Frost Poetry Review and Boston Hassle. She loves being one of the organizers of the Boston Poetry Marathon because she gets to meet so many excellent poets.
Her social and biological nieces and nephews call her Auntie Boo-Boo and that’s awesome. Her role models in life are Blanche Devereaux from “The Golden Girls”and Maude from “Harold and Maude.”
NotebookWitch.com/Bridget-Eileen
Chad Parenteau – Gopher
Chad Parenteau was born in Woonsocket Rhode Island and grew up in Bellingham, Massachusetts. While attending Framingham State College (Now Framingham State University), he was active in campus literary groups, contributing to The Onyx, Framingham State College’s literary journal, and Life Underwater, an early effort by Boston-based writer, musician and journalist James O’Brien.
His work has since appeared in numerous print and online publications, including anthologies such as Reimagine America from Vagabond Books. His most recent full-length collection, The Collapsed Bookshelf, was published by Tell -Tale Chapbooks in 2020.
Chad is the current host and organizer of Stone Soup Poetry, one of the longest-running poetry venues in the state. In 2013, he joined Jason Wright’s Oddball Magazine as Associate Editor.
Boston Poetry Marathon 