Taylor Mali

Taylor Mali (he/him) is an American spoken-word poet, teacher advocate, voiceover artist, and game designer from New York City. He is the author of the poetry collections Bouquet of Red Flags (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014), The Last Time as We Are (Write Bloody Publishing, 2009), and What Learning Leaves (Hanover Press, 2002); the poem and essay What Teachers Make: In Praise of the Greatest Job in the World (Tantor and Blackstone Publishing, 2012); and the one-person play Teacher! Teacher!, for which he received a New York Foundation of the Arts grant and won the jury prize for best solo performance at the 2001 Comedy Arts Festival. 

In a review for Pank Magazine of What Teachers Make, Joy Mushacke Smith writes, “His tight prose told through heartwarming vignettes showers positive reinforcement for the good teachers in the world—those who make positive phone calls home, instead of always the bad; those who demand a child’s best work and don’t reward the highest grade for anything less.” 

Mali is a four-time National Poetry Slam champion and has been featured on the TV show Def Poetry Jam and the documentaries Slam Planet (2006) and SlamNation (1997). His poetry has also been featured on Saturday Night Live. 

Mali is the former president of Poetry Slam, Incorporated, and he has recorded numerous audio books, including The Great Fire (Blackstone Audio, 2003) by Jim Murphy, for which he won the Golden Earphones Award for children’s narration. His poetry has been anthologized in The Spoken Word Revolution (Sourcebooks, 2003), Will Work for Peace: New Political Poems (Zeropanik Press, 1999), and Poetry Nation: The North American Anthology of Fusion Poetry (Véhicule Press, 1998), among others. 

Mali is also the inventor of Metaphor Dice, a game that helps writers think more figuratively. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he is the founding curator of the Page Meets Stage reading series at the Bowery Poetry Club.