Taylor Mali



Taylor McDowell Mali (born 28 March 1965) is an American slam poet, humorist, teacher, and voiceover artist.

Life
A 10th-generation native of New York City, Taylor Mali graduated from the Collegiate School, a private school for boys, in 1983. He received a B.A. in English from Bowdoin College in 1987 and an M.A. in English/Creative Writing from Kansas State University in 1993. He also studied drama with the Royal Shakespeare Academy at Oxford. One of four children, his mother was children's book author Jane L. Mali, a recipient of the American Book Award, and his father was H. Allen Mali, vice president of Henry W.T. Mali & Co., manufacturers of pool table coverings. He is the great-great-grandson of John Taylor Johnston, founding president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1993, he married Rebecca Ruth Tauber, who died in 2004. On May 13, 2006 he married Marie-Elizabeth Mundheim, a high school friend.

Teaching
Taylor Mali spent nine years teaching English, history, and math, including stints at Browning School, a boys' school on the Upper East Side of New York City, and Cape Cod Academy, a K-12 private school on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He now lectures and conducts workshops for teachers and students all over the world. In 2001 Taylor Mali used a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts to develop the one-man show "Teacher! Teacher!" about poetry, teaching, and math. He is a strong advocate for the nobility of teaching and in 2000 he set out to create 1,000 new teachers through "poetry, persuasion, perseverance, or passion." As of January 13, 2012, he has 891.

Poetry
As a slam poetry performer, Taylor Mali has been on seven National Poetry Slam teams; six appeared on the finals stage and four won the competition (1996 with Team Providence; 1997, 2000 and 2002 with Team NYC-Urbana). Mali is the author of What Learning Leaves and the Last Time as We Are (Write Bloody Publishing), has recorded four CDs, and is included in various anthologies. Poets who have influenced him include Billy Collins, Saul Williams, Walt Whitman, Rives, Mary Oliver, and Naomi Shihab Nye. He is perhaps best known for the poem "What Teachers Make."

He appeared in Taylor Mali & Friends Live at the Bowery Poetry Club and the documentaries "SlamNation" (1997) and "Slam Planet" (2006). He was also in the HBO production, "Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry," which won a Peabody Award in 2003. Taylor Mali is the former president of Poetry Slam Incorporated, and he has performed with such renowned poets as Billy Collins and Allen Ginsberg. Although he retired from the National Poetry Slam competition in 2005, he still helps curate NYC-Urbana Poetry Series, held weekly at the Bowery Poetry Club.

Awards

 * 1996, 1997, 2000, 2002 - National Poetry Slam winning team
 * 2001 - U. S. Comedy Arts Festival jury prize for best solo performance, "Teacher! Teacher!"
 * 2003 - AudioFile Earphones Award for The Great Fire.

Books

 * What Learning Leaves, 2002 - ISBN 1-887012-17-6

Anthologized
Collections in which Taylor Mali's work is included
 * Poetry on Stage: At the Red Barn Theatre, Key West, 1995 ISBN 978-1-888036-00-8
 * Poetry Nation: The North American Anthology of Fusion Poetry, 1998, ISBN 1-55065-112-9
 * Will Work For Peace: New Political Poems, 1999, ISBN 0-9666459-1-X
 * Bearing Witness, 2001, ISBN 978-1-56976-130-4
 * Freedom to Speak Anthology, 2002, ISBN 1-893972-07-0
 * The Spoken Word Revolution 2003, ISBN 978-1-4022-0037-3

Audio CDs

 * The Difference Between Left & Wrong, 1995
 * Poems from the Like Free Zone, 2000
 * Conviction, 2003
 * Icarus Airlines, 2007

Narration

 * American Fairy Tales, audiobook, 1998
 * Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World, audiobook, 2000
 * Hope Along the Wind: The Story of Harry Hay, documentary, 2002
 * Blizzard!, audiobook, 2003
 * The Great Fire, audiobook, 2003
 * Revenge of the Whale, audiobook, 2005
 * ESCAPE! The Story of the Great Houdini, audiobook, 2006
 * Close To Shore, audiobook, 2007

CD Anthologies
Collections in which Taylor Mali's work is included
 * Attack of the Urbanabots (The Wordsmith Press, 2007)
 * New High Score (The Wordsmith Press, 2004)
 * Writers Week IX (WWIX, 2004)
 * Best of Urbana 2003 (The Wordsmith Press, 2003)
 * The Kerfuffle Incident: Best of the Kalamazoo Poetry Slam (KPS, 2003)
 * Urbana: Bowery Poetry Club (The Wordsmith Press, 2002)
 * Freedom to Speak Anthology(CD) (The Wordsmith Press, 2002)
 * Spoken Word Underground (The Wordsmith Press, 2001)
 * ''NYC Slams (Anthology) (PoetCD, 2000)