The SOL Board & our 7-word bios
Ginger Marshall
Co-President
Very freckled girl
Spontaneously creates
Seven-word haikus
Olu Animashuan
Co-President
high-pitched laughter, the birdsong of my fly soul
Henri
Garrison-Desany
Events Manager
This is my 7-word bio.
Catherine Kim
Outreach Ringmaster
a silly goose,
possibly a tabby cat
Awais Hussain
Publicity Manager
Poetry, Physics,
Philosophy, Pool,
Programming,
and … perfunctoriness?
Mariah Browne
Workshop Manager
no indoor voice.
PLEASE YELL WITH ME!
Anastacia Valdespino
Assistant Workshop Manager
Wildflowers rise from
sidewalks, and I note.
Maura Church
Webmaster
Dreamer and geek
who loves you already
Melanie Wang
Member-at-Large
loves: root vegetables,
asking too many questions
Danny Wood
Member-at-Large
wacky, weird,
imaginary best friend,
told you…
Bryan Erickson
Member-at-Large
This is my 7-word bio.
Julia Becerra
Member-at-Large
Laughs at own jokes
…constantly.
No shame.
Jamie Banks
President Emeritus
Life/art purpose:
causing laughter,
occasional thoughts.
Cassandra
Euphrat Weston
President Emerita
Word nerd. Let’s change shit with art.
Michelle Suh
Events Manager Emerita
student, sister, friend.
loves (word)play, details; people.
Lost
I sometime think of what they would say now,
If they had of known what I went through.
Always laughing and smiling and making jokes,
Joke after joke after joke.
Pretending so hard I didn’t care that it hurt.
So much. Still not good enough.
It was nobody’s fault that they didn’t see the pain,
After all it was hidden so well.
But maybe they should have looked closer, or
I should have tried harder.
The expectations often felt suffocating,
But this suffocation was all in mind.
I think. Or thought. And hoped.
Everyone else seemed to survive, I remember seeing it.
Gazing at them, in awe, in jealousy and then looking
Back on myself in disgust.
I tried to remember what my parents always told me,
That no one has it easy and every one struggles.
But them, the others, they got through their struggles.
I couldn’t.
I remember every day waking up and telling myself,
Today is a new day.
Today I will shine brighter, work harder and be better than yesterday.
And at the end of every day, all I had was a book of failed stories,
Stories of failure. That haunted me in my sleep and in the daylight.
Inescapable and internal.
But still, every morning I’d tell myself,
Let’s try again.
Let’s just try again.
There’s only so many times you can try again. But I told myself,
Keep going.
In a strange way, I found my greatest comfort in my friends
But also my worst fears.
The success, the beauty, the talent of them. Terrified me and
Made me feel like I would never find fulfillment or be fulfilled.
And in times like these, all I really needed was to see my parents.
Talk to them, hug them, let my walls down because they knew everything
There was to know.
But they were so far away, away from the world I was in
And this disconnection was so isolating. So frightening.
It was like I saw all the colorful things around me, but when I came close
It all turned to black and grey.
Do you want to know the worst part?
I knew it shouldn’t be like this. I knew I should change my thoughts.
I knew, I knew, I knew, I just didn’t know how.
I read all the quotes that tried to lift my soul,
I listened to the songs that urged me to continue,
I heard my friend’s compliments and congratulations.
But still, the tears trickled down, slowly and silently,
And never in front of them.