KEVIN COVAL
Author of everyday people (EM Press Spring 2008) and Slingshots (A Hip-Hop Poetica), named Book of the Year - finalist by The American Library Association.
Coval has performed at universities, high schools and theaters on four continents in seven countries including; The Parliament of the World’s Religions in Capetown, South Africa, The African Hip-Hop Festival: Battle Cry, Poetry Society of London, Yale, Steppenwolf Theater, Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Stanford, St. Xavier’s College in Bombay, India, and four seasons of Russell Simmons’ HBO Def Poetry Jam, for which he also serves as artistic consultant.
Coval’s writing has appeared in The Spoken Word Revolution and The Spoken Word Revolution: Redux (Source Books), Total Chaos (Basic Civitas), I Speak of the City: New York City Poems (Columbia University Press), Awakening The Spirit (Skylight Paths), XCP: Cross-Cultural Poetics, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reporter, Cross Currents, Crab Orchard Review, Make Magazine, Garland Court Review, The Daily Herald, seen on C-Span, WGN, and can be heard regularly on Chicago Public Radio, where is resident poet and hip-hop correspondent. Founder of Louder Than A Bomb: The Chicago Teen Poetry Festival, the largest youth poetry festival in the world, Coval is poet-in-residence at The Jane Addams’ Hull House Museum, faculty at The School of the Art Institute and University of Illinois-Chicago and Minister of Hip-Hop Poetics at The University of Wisconsin-Madison. For over ten years has been teaching hip-hop poetics in high schools and colleges around the country.
Since November of 2005, when EM Press published, Slingshots (A Hip-Hop Poetica), Coval’s first full-length book and accompanying CD, Coval has toured the country gaining national acclaim and critical reviews, including praise from these publications:
Voice of the new Chicago... should stand up there with the work of Carl Sandburg, and I don’t say that lightly – Rick Kogan, Chicago Tribune
Coval echoes Allen Ginsberg in his spiritual revolt, cosmic vision, and longing for multicultural transcendence. In boldly beautiful and outspoken hip-hop manifestos… and a Studs Terkelesque openness to humankind's countless stories, fuel Coval's percussive calls for compassion and connection. One potent and positive debut – Donna Seaman, American Library Association, Booklist
A prophet... A tour de force... the whole book is love songs of one kind or another He can soothe and scathe, hurt and heal, in the course of a single poem – Rick Massimo, Providence Journal
What's truly magnificent is Coval's ability to honestly approach race and Zionism from a white, Jewish perspective. He familiarizes himself with numerous dialects... mixes them with Yiddish/Hebrew words and descriptions of ancient tradition that creates an art so honest it would have emcee Matisyahu lamenting his lack of creativity – Emory Wheel
Kevin Coval’s debut book is fresh! High art... at times incendiary and at others, personal and compelling. His poems feel urgent – Elemental Magazine
Coval's greatest strength is his rhythmic, beautiful prose… he's relatable-and likeable- for his remarkable honesty and boyish romanticism, his studied understanding of race and class, his unflinching faith in hip-hop culture and his willingness to speak truth to power, no matter what the personal cost – URB
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