Denice Frohman

DENICE FROHMAN is a poet, performer, and educator from New York City. A Pew Fellow and Baldwin-Emerson Fellow, she’s received additional support from CantoMundo, Headlands Center for the Arts, the National Association of Latino Arts & Cultures, Leeway Foundation, Blue Mountain Center, Millay Colony, Palm Beach Poetry Festival, and is a former Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion. Her work explores the complexities of language, lineage, queerness, and the colonial relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico. Frohman sees her poetry as a tool for social change, and cultural preservation, and aims to subvert traditional notions of power and knowledge. As a queer Nuyorican, Frohman is the daughter of Puerto Rican and Jewish parents. She played professional basketball in Puerto Rico after college, where she earned a four-year athletic scholarship, and earned her Master’s in Education from Drexel University. As a facilitator, Frohman has led workshops for adults and young people at The Watering Hole Retreat (faculty), Intercultural Journeys, Girls Leadership Institute, Youth Study Juvenile Detention Center, and at hundreds of schools and organizations. A former Program Director at The Philly Youth Poetry Movement, she worked to create safe spaces for Philadelphia teens to discover the power of their voices. Her passion to mentor young people has always been a central part of her work and she hopes to inspire them — especially young queer people of color— to know that their stories are worth telling. Along with a collective of Puerto Rican writers, she co-organized #PoetsforPuertoRico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria to raise funds and consciousness about the ongoing political and humanitarian crisis on the island. She lives in Philadelphia, PA.