Gabriel Cortez is a poet, educator, and organizer. He is a VONA fellow, 2023 YBCA Creative Corps awardee, board secretary at Performing Arts Workshop, and the inaugural poet in residence with the Shelterwood Collective and the Ecology Center in Berkeley. From 2014 to 2023, Gabriel served as Lead Poet Mentor and Director of Programs at Youth Speaks, one of the world’s leading presenters of spoken word performance, education, and youth development programs. Gabriel is a member of the artist collective, Ghostlines, and co-founder of The Root Slam, an award-winning poetry venue dedicated to inclusivity, justice, and artistic growth, as well as Write Home, a project working to challenge public perceptions of houselessness and shift critical resources to houseless Bay Area youth through poetry and arts programming. For more on Gabriel, visit www.gabrielmcortez.com
2025 Inside Ideas
Introducer – Organized Resistance From the Ground Up
2025 Bookworm Blockparty
Speaker – Garden of Possibilities
Moderator – Strength and Solace in Numbers
