Noel Jones

Born and raised in Alaska, National Slam Poetry Champion, Noel Jones moved to New York City ten years ago, a jazz vocalist. Upon discovering slam poetry in 1999, she battled her way through one of the country's most formidable slam scenes and won a coveted slot on one of New York's three national teams in her first year of competition. Representing Team NYC-Union Square at the National Poetry Slam (NPS) in Chicago, IL, Jones aided her team to a 2nd place finish. Featured on 60 Minutes and in The New York Times, Jones was subsequently elected to be part of an all-woman tour introducing slam poetry to Denmark, where she won the Amazon Mermaid Slam in Copenhagen, and performed on Danish radio and television.

The following year, Jones qualified for another New York team, Team NYC-Urbana, and this time took the 2000 NPS championship in Providence, RI. Additionally in 2000, she won the Campbell Group Slam in Baltimore, MD and was chosen in 2001 as one of six poets selected for the Atlantic Center for the Arts residency with Saul Williams in New Smyrna Beach, FL. Among other appearances, Jones has been featured at the YWCA Student Association's National Convention in Phoenix, AZ, the South by Southwest Music Festival 2001 in Austin, TX, on New York's Studio Y on the MetroChannel, Boston's Stand-Up Poetry on BATV, NPR's "Infinite Mind," and KNBA's "Morning Lone" in Anchorage, AK.

Back in New York, Jones taught poetry to at-risk youth at East Side Community High School as part of Rosie Perez's Working Playgrounds program, and to women inmates on Riker's Island in conjunction with Youth Aloud. All this, while continuing to make University appearances on the road, including Washington State University, UC Davis, Yale, and Princeton, among others.

Jones took time away from the performance scene to focus for a year on songwriting, culminating in a recording by the Smithsonian Archives Folk Collection with Jack Hardy, performing live in New York at the infamous Bottom Line in the West Village. She decided to finish her Creative Writing degree at Hunter College, and was nominated this year by professor, poet and author William Pitt Root to participate in an international writer's residency in Prague, where she intends to spend her summer.