Gina Duran is a Queer Indigenous Xicanc poet, playwright, essayist, educator, and founder of the IE Hope Collective; an outreach that helps people living on the streets and in shelters, which provides poetry, art, and yoga workshops for low-income, homeless, foster, refugee, and LGBTQ2S+ youth. She was a Theatre Of Hearts/Youth First Artist-In-Residence, the Guest Editor of Boundless 2022, of The Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival and is currently the Host for The Collective on KQBH and Spotify. Duran teaches yoga, mindfulness, poetry and art workshops for EOPS, NextUp, CalWorks, the CARE Program, and Foster Youth at Chaffey College, and has taught workshops at the University of Redlands, Pitzer College, Ontario TAY Center, Joshua Home: an LGBTQ Youth Safe Haven, and several school districts. Works from her debut collection of poetry …and so, the Wind was Born, published by FlowerSong Press (2021) can be found in the Her Story Mixed Tape Collection at the Autry Museum of the American West in LA, the Life in Quarantine project at Stanford University, and wherever books are sold online. Duran’s personal essay, “How the Crestline Blizzard Taught Me Forgiveness” (Women Who Submit, 2023), was nominated for Best of Net. She was a guest professor/lecturer at UCLA, and her research “Sexual Violence and the Assimilation Response of LGBTQ2 Female Identified Latina and Indigenous Americans,” published by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaigne (2018), informs her art, poetry, and efforts for marginalized youth. When she’s not making art and building community, Duran is an MFA Grad student at Antioch University (in LA) while she works as a substitute teacher, yoga instructor, massage therapist, and youth program director. She feels art and community can and will lead to positive change.