Tiny Gray-Garcia
Lisa "Tiny" Gray-Garcia is a journalist, poverty scholar, poet, lecturer, spoken word artist, single mixed-race mama, and author. The founder and executive director of POOR Magazine - a non-profit media and arts organization serving low and no-income communities of color - Tiny has instigated several revolutionary media, arts and education programs, including the first welfare-to-work journalism program (PoorNewsNetwork) and several cultural projects such as the Race, Poverty and Media Justice Institute, Po' Poets Project, Youth in Media, and the welfareQUEENS. She is author of the memoir Criminal of Poverty: Growing up Homeless in America (City Lights Books, 2007).
Pat Graney
The Prison Project is part of choreographer Pat Graney's arts-based educational program for female ex-offenders. It is based on Keeping the Faiththe Prison Project, which the Pat Graney Company has been offering in Washington women's prisons since 1995. Participants are encouraged to discover a sense of identity and agency through the vehicles of performance, video documentation, and a published anthology of their writings. The women perform and express themselves, and learn to translate these skills into meaningful life experiences outside of prison. Also providing referral services to program participants, the program meets both the practical and personal needs of female ex-offenders. Made possible in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Community Foundation of South Puget Sound, Pride Foundation, Seattle University, and the Seattle Foundation.