BIO

Chanell Ruth is a writer, multi-medium creator and educator. After her year as poet-in-residence The Chicago Poetry Center (2016-2017), and several years as a faculty member and administrator at City Colleges of Chicago, she joined the faculty at the University of Indianapolis, where she taught English and creative writing in a joint program at Zhejiang Yuexiu University in Shaoxing, China (2017-2021). She now teaches Composition and Literature in UIndy’s Build program. She was the recipient of the Great River Writer’s Retreat in 2018. While receiving her MFA from Chicago State University, she served as Poetry Editor of Warpland: A Journal of Black Literature and Ideas. Her poems have appeared in the Louisiana English Journal, Reverie, Fingernails Across the Chalkboard: Poetry and Prose on HIV/AIDS from the Black Diaspora, and the stage adaptation of the text. Her writings on HIV/AIDS continue in Spaces Between Us: Poetry, Prose and Art on HIV/AIDS. Her work has been curated at the Du Sable Museum exhibit The Citizens Picnic: Lynching in America from 1865 to Present. Her poetry also appears in Mom Egg, Drunken Boat, Lone Star Legacy: African American History in Texas, A Shanghai Poetry Zine, and Tidal Basin Review as she was the featured Series Poet for the Spring 2012, issue. Chanell is a Hurston/Wright and Callaloo Workshops and Vermont Studio Center Residency alum (2012, 2018). She remains passionate about writing, education and women’s health, spreading her voice in many formats, from a feature on the WGN news, to multiple appearances as a panelist on WYCC’s “The Professors”, participating in the performance storytelling shows “Mortified” and “I Am Enough” Shanghai, to a role in an award-winning short film.