Photo Credit: Lilly Winter
India Lena González is a poet, editor, and multidisciplinary artist. She received her BA from Columbia University and her MFA from New York University. Her work is published in American Chordata, the Brooklyn Review, Harvard Review, Lampblack Magazine, Literary Hub, PANK, Pigeon Pages, Poetry Northwest, and the Washington Post, among others, and it has been featured on the Slowdown podcast. fox woman get out! (BOA Editions, 2023), chosen by Aracelis Girmay as part of the Blessing the Boats Selections, is her debut poetry collection and was a finalist for Poetry Society of America’s 2024 Norma Farber First Book Award. Her book has taken her to classrooms at MIT, Fordham College at Lincoln Center, Rutgers University-Newark's MFA program, and more as a guest author and visiting artist.
A three-time National Poetry Series finalist, India is also a professional dancer, award-winning choreographer, and actor and has had the pleasure of performing at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, St. Mark’s Church, La Mama, New York Live Arts, and other such venues. She has taught at Columbia University and NYU, as well as for the Poetry Society of New York, and has worked as an instructor for Teachers & Writers Collaborative. She serves as the Features Editor of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Outside of being well-versed in teaching poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and drama, India has also developed her own intensive blending movement-based somatic practices and rituals with writing to help other writers reframe how they show up to the page. This furthers her pedagogical belief that writing is not a disembodied, mental exercise; it should involve our entire being, coming from our bodies---the delicate and wonderful containers of our lives and personas, our vehicles of spirit. Aside from this work of melding her expertise in the literary and dance worlds, India is a Pilates instructor and movement coach.
As a performer, India has studied at the prestigious Dance Theatre of Harlem, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Maryland Youth Ballet, and the Rock School for Dance Education, among others. She has had the pleasure of working with choreographers Faye Driscoll, Lance Gries, Patricia Hoffbauer, Jodi Melnick, and Reggie Wilson (of Fist and Heel Performance Group), and was a dancer with Molissa Fenley and Company from 2017-2019 (with coverage in BOMB Magazine and Dance Magazine during her tenure as a company member). As an actor she has taken part in readings, plays, and short films, having been trained in both classical and contemporary material, comedy and drama.
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