Chinaka Hodge

Chinaka Hodge is a poet, playwright, and the author of For Girls With Hips: Collected Writings and Poems, and the play Mirrors in Every Corner. Currently Artist in Residence at The Headlands Center for the Arts in Marin, CA, she was the Assistant Director of Suzan Lori Parks’ 365 Plays, 365 Days, at its San Francisco debut in November 2006, and co-wrote Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s Scourge, which opened in San Francisco a year earlier. In 2007, she served as a member of the U.S. Artist Delegation to the World Social Forum in Nairobi, Kenya. Ms. Hodge is the inaugural recipient of Intersection’s Changemaker Award. She’s also been the recipient of the University of South California’s Annenberg Fellowship, the San Francisco Foundation’s Jackson, Phelan and Tennenbaum Literary Award, and was named Best Poet of the East Bay by The East Bay Express. Her writings have been featured in Teen People Magazine, Newsweek, The San Francisco Chronicle, Scholastic Magazine, Current Magazine, The Annual Women of Color Film Festival, PBS, NPR, CNN, C-Span, and on HBO’s Def Poetry. Chinaka is a graduate of New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, and received an M.F.A. in Writing for Film and TV at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts.