About
Gina Rae Duran is a Queer Xicanx poet, playwright, visual and performance artist, essayist, educator, and founder of the IE Hope Collective; an outreach that helps people living on the streets and in shelters, which provides poetry, art, and yoga for self-care workshops for low-income, homeless, foster, refugee, and LGBTQ2S+ youth. She was a Theatre Of Hearts/Youth First Artist-In-Residence, in 2023, and the Guest Editor of Boundless 2022, of The Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival and is currently the Host for The Collective on KQBH and Spotify.
Gina Rae Duran is currently the editor of the anthology The White Picket Fence: Stories of Individuality as Rebelliousness, forthcoming FlowerSong Press.
Duran teaches yoga, mindfulness, poetry and art workshops for EOPS, NextUp, CalWorks, the CARE Program, and Foster Youth at Chaffey College, and has taught workshops at the University of Redlands, Pitzer College, Ontario TAY Center, Joshua Home: an LGBTQ Youth Safe Haven, juvenile hall, and several school districts. Works from her debut collection of poetry “…and so, the Wind was Born,” published by FlowerSong Press (2021) can be found in select bookstore throughout the US, and where ever books are sold online. While select poems such as, "When She Walked Into the Room," can be found in the Her Story Mixed Tape Collection at the Autry Museum of the American West, in LA, and online in the Life in Quarantine project, at Stanford University. Duran’s personal essay, “How the Crestline Blizzard Taught Me Forgiveness,” (Women Who Submit, 2023) was nominated for Best of Net. She was a guest professor/lecturer at UCLA, and her research "Sexual Violence and the Assimilation Response of LGBTQ2 Female Identified Latina and Indigenous Americans," published by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2018) informs her art, poetry, and efforts for marginalized youth. Duran is a Dual MFA Graduate in Poetry and Playwriting from Antioch University (in LA), with BAs in English World Literature: Creative Writing and Studio Art. When she's not making art and building community, she works as a Substitute Teacher and Paraprofessional, Yoga Instructor, Massage Therapist, and youth program director and workshop facilitator. She feels art and community can and will lead to positive change.