Isa Aguilera is a teenage poet, and an avid writer and reader. Ever since they were young, they always found themself best expressed through writing, whether the medium be poetry, short stories, songwriting, essays… you name it, they did it. They are extremely excited to be bettering their writing with the OZ Arts Art Wire program for the 2023-2024 school year.

Isa Aguilera

Sally Amkoa

Sally Amkoa is a writer, storyteller and public narrative coach from Kenya. As a teaching fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, she worked with leaders from across the world to surface powerful stories from their lives to inspire action in their communities. She is a co-host and organizer at Tenx9 Nashville Storytelling, and a trained Narrative 4 story exchange facilitator.

Noah Cappellino is a senior student at Nashville School of the Arts. They love writing absurd prose pieces and science fiction, sharks, the threat of autumn, and cotton candy lollipops. Unfortunately, Noah will be getting braces soon and they request your patience as far as speaking goes. Teeth moving around as you age is probably a myth, because teeth have no business going anywhere but up and down, but they are helpless to this brutal lie.

Noah Cappellino

Asif ElAmri-Brantley

Asif ElAmri-Brantley is a high school senior born and raised in Nashville, he’s always been homeschooled, which means he’s been allowed to write, make art and run rampant in Tennessee’s wild places for 18 years. He wants to see more people like him in media, so his stories are full of queer, mixed-culture, chronically ill joy. In his writing he tries to capture both the world around him and the world inside his head.

Kyoko Eng (she/her, born Memphis, TN) is an interaction designer and artist who crafts and conducts systems, artifacts, and experiences that explore the intersections of tech & nature, AI & privacy, and the personal versus the collective. She received her BFA in Graphic Design from The University of Tennessee, Knoxville and currently works as a Product Lead for the open source community, OpenMined. As a designer she is media agnostic, so when she isn’t defining UX flows you can often find her expanding her practice by dropping in at your local art/performance class, tinkering with a new API at your non-local repo, or researching and writing at Eastside’s Ugly Mugs.

Kyoko Eng

Ami` Hanna-Huff

Ami` Hanna-Huff is a poet, watercolorist, and Graduate student in English at Belmont University. A Fisk University alumna, she received her B.A. in English with a minor in Women and Gender Studies. With the primary goal of translating feelings into tangible visions, her poetry revolves around her experiences against the world. She has poetry/art in the online and print publications Coffee People Zine, Drunk Monkeys, and Moody Zine.

Nat Kat (she/he/they) is an interdisciplinary artist, anthropologist writer and otherwise vexing person. They create works based on their experiences as a queer Mexican neurodivergent woman/guy cat-haver in an otherwise vexing world. Whether it be through film, through sculpture from reworked materials, through Micron-inked comics, or purely through the written word, nat kat is simply trying to process and make sense of it all.

Nat Martinez-White

Sarah Page-McCaw

Sarah Page-McCaw is a high school senior at University School of Nashville and is thrilled to be joining ArtWire this season! She is a two-time national medal winner from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards and has attended a three-week creative writing intensive at Interlochen Center for the Arts. In addition to writing, Sarah enjoys playing clarinet, reading, playing with her cats, and listening to music.

JR Robles is thrilled to be part of this year’s cohort of Art Wire writers. An actor, writer, and filmmaker, JR is always seeking inspiring art that sparks more art. His poems and essays have been published in a number of places, and he is co-producer of the Dare to Fail! Film showcase. JR lives in Nashville with his family.

JR Robles

Aaron Shapiro

Aaron Herschel Shapiro lives in Murfreesboro, TN, where he teaches courses in writing, literature, and Jewish Studies with the English Department of Middle Tennessee State University. He is a recipient of a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship, the Paul Muldoon Poetry Fellowship, and the William R. Wolfe Award, and his work has appeared in Mesmer, Dream Geographies, and Reckoning: Tennessee Writers on 2020.