Rosemarie Dombrowski, PhD, Founding Director
Rosemarie Dombrowski (RD) is the founder and director of Revisionary Arts and the inaugural Poet Laureate of Phoenix, AZ. She serves on the Narrative Medicine Advisory Board at the University of Arizona’s Biomedical campus in Phoenix, and she teaches Medical Humanities courses at Arizona State University’s Downtown Phoenix campus.
RD’s scholarship and creative work lies at the intersection of poetry, medicine, and disability. Accordingly, her first collection, The Book of Emergencies (Five Oaks Press, 2014), is a lyrical ethnography of the culture of nonverbal Autism.
After nearly 20 years as a community and university-based literary arts educator and program developer, which has included a range of therapeutic poetry courses and workshops, RD is the recipient of an Arts Hero Award, a Women & Philanthropy grant, a Fellowship from the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics, and a Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. In 2020, she was named one of The Great 48 by Phoenix Magazine.
She holds BAs in Anthropology and English as well as a PhD in American Literature with an emphasis in poetry, and she has earned ongoing education certificates from the Iowa International Writers’ Workshop and the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project.
Learn more about her work at rdpoet.com
Kelsey Pinckney, Assistant Director
Kelsey Pinckney served as the Assistant Director and Managing Editor of Four Chambers Press for 5 years, working to celebrate, invigorate, and support the literary community of Phoenix. She also worked as the inaugural Program Manager of Read Better Be Better, an education nonprofit focused on literacy, mentorship, and the empowerment of public school students throughout Maricopa county. From 2016-2018, she served as a board member for the Phoenix chapter of Young Nonprofit Professionals Network (YNPN).
Kelsey holds a BA in Community Advocacy and Social Policy from Arizona State University. Her experiences in the arts, nonprofit, and education communities in Phoenix led her to go back for her Master of Social Work (MSW) degree, which she received from Arizona State University in May 2021. As part of the MSW program, she served on the crisis response team in Chandler, AZ, where she learned a lot about brief/short-term therapy, crisis intervention, and the power of owning and expressing your personal narrative when processing trauma or hardship of any kind.
Kelsey is endlessly interested in and inspired by the intersection between art and healing, and what her place is in that journey for those around her. She is currently pursuing many things including self-actualization, an effective and life-giving daily routine, and a Doula certification. She is grateful to be a part of the Revisionary Arts journey, and for it to be a part of hers. Kelsey recently learned 24 new crochet stitches, and lives in Phoenix with her partner and their cat, Truman (Capote).
Melissa Leto, Head Facilitator
Melissa Leto is a writer from New York who now lives near the Beeline Highway and Salt River. She holds an MFA from Northern Arizona University and her work has appeared in Four Chambers Press and Shrew Lit Magazine. Her narratives and poems distill her experiences of trauma, grief, and joy as well as they celebrate nature and queer love. In addition to being a facilitator for Revisionary Arts, she is an editor for Rinky Dink Press and writes for several local businesses committed to positive change in the communities they occupy.
Joy Young, Facilitator Trainer
Joy Young is a performance and teaching spoken word artist based in Phoenix, AZ. Their performance works focuses on transgressing borders, both real and imagined, entering social justice topics through poetic personal narratives, has been featured on Button Poetry and Everyday Feminism as well as on stages and in colleges and classrooms across the country. Additionally, they are the cofounder and editor of Prickly Pear Printing, a project dedicated to highlighting written and visual work with a focus on growth, beauty, and the celebration of bodies and narratives often silenced.
Whether creating storytelling curriculum for restorative justice or community engagement projects, running workshops that explore identity and what it means to be human, or performing their own poetry and stories, Joy’s work seeks to cultivate strong personal narratives within a larger social justice context, which is why they were awarded the Mayor’s Arts Award in 2018 and named Storyteller of the Year by the Phoenix New times in 2019. They believe our personal narratives should be a driving force for healing ourselves and the world around us— that they are a doorway through which we should consciously enter the world of social justice in hopes of creating understanding, connection, and making substantive change.
Alyssa Klink, Outreach Coordinator
Alyssa Klink received her undergraduate degree in journalism and political science from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication in the spring of 2020. Since graduating, she has become Revisionary Art’s Impact & Outreach Coordinator, as well as one of the non-profit’s board members. While in school, she worked as an editor for ASU’s Write On, Downtown publication. Alyssa has been writing prose and poetry for a few years, and worked with her honors professor, who is also the founder of Revisionary Arts, to implement poetry workshops at the University of Arizona medical school in downtown Phoenix.
Alyssa believes that bringing poetry therapy to various Phoenix communities, especially in the era of COVID, will aid to heal and support those who seek an alternative type of therapeutic process. When she’s not reading or writing, Alyssa loves to ski, sing, play the piano, and go hiking.
Mara-Clarisa Boiangiu, Social Media Coordinator
Mara Boiangiu is a student intern with Revisionary Arts as a Neuroscience and Global Health major within Barrett the Honors College at Arizona State University. As an incoming senior, Mara spends her time working with nonprofit organizations, conducting research at the Biodesign Institute and leading various orgs on and off campus. In her free time, she, of course, loves to write poetry, take pictures and travel. Being a pre-medicine student, the intersection between poetry and medicine is what drew her to Revisionary Arts and she hopes to continue to explore this passion in the future working with RA.
Emili Lu, Facilitator
Emilie Lu is a graduate of Arizona State University and Barrett, the Honors College who enjoys dancing between the lines of science and art. She earned a degree in Medical studies in May 2021 and is a creative nonfiction writer and also dabbles in other art like watercolor painting, drawing, pen doodling, and playing piano.
Rebecca Fish Ewan, Facilitator
Rebecca Fish Ewan, a poet/cartoonist/writer and founder of Plankton Press, teaches landscape architecture at Arizona State University (her creative writing MFA home). She grew up in Berkeley, California, and now lives in Tempe with her family. Her cartoon/free verse memoir, By the Forces of Gravity, is her grief response to a childhood trauma. Her new book, Doodling for Writers, just released through Books by Hippocampus. You can connect with her at rebeccafishewan.com or on IG @doodlescriptorium
