KEVIN COVAL is the author of ALA "Book of the Year" finalist Slingshots: A Hip-Hop Poetica and Everyday People. He is also the Artistic Director of Louder Than a Bomb: The Chicago Teen Poetry Festival which he co-founded. Coval has performed at hundreds of universities, high schools, synagogues, and theaters in seven countries on four continents. A regular contributor to Chicago Public Radio and a four-time HBO Def Poet, Coval is former poet-in-residence at The Jane Addams' Hull House Museum and is currently faculty at The School of the Art Institute. He has taught creative writing and spoken-word performance workshops in Chicago high schools for over ten years.