SpokenHeard with Jessica Helen Lopez and Susan Dobbe Chase

Jessica Helen Lopez has been named the City of Albuquerque Poet Laureate. She has also been a featured writer for 30 Poets in their 30’s by MUZZLE magazine.  Lopez is a nationally recognized award-winning slam poet, and holds the title of 2012 and 2014 Women of the World (WOW) City of ABQ Champion.Her first collection of poetry, Always Messing With Them Boys (West End Press, 2011) made the Southwest Book of the Year reading list and was also awarded the Zia Book Award presented by NM Women Press. Her more recent publication,Cunt.Bomb.(Swimming with Elephants Publications 2014), is a chapbook collection of poems focusing on the powers of the feminine. She is the founder of La Palabra – The Word is a Woman collective created for and by women and gender-identified women and a Ted Talk speaker alum.Her work has been anthologized in A Bigger Boat: The Unlikely Success of the Albuquerque Slam Scene(UNM Press), Earth Ships: A New Mecca Poetry Collection(NM Book Award Finalist),Tandem Lit Slam (San Francisco), Adobe Walls, Malpais Review, SLAB Literary Magazine and the upcoming Courage Anthology: Daring Poems for Gutsy Girls (Write Bloody Press).