Our Panelists
Joyce Enzor Maust
Joyce is Delaware’s House of Representatives Poet Laureate and a 2024 Delaware Individual Artist Fellow for Emerging Poets. Raised on a dairy farm in southwest Pennsylvania, where her family had worked the same land for generations, she grew up surrounded by nature, storytelling, faith, and a strong sense of community. With degrees in English and physics, she brings both lyric attention and a questioning mind to poems that explore family, tradition, resilience, and the truths people often keep hidden. Her work has appeared in Broadkill Review, Dreamstreets, and Gargoyle.
Phillip Bannowsky
Phillip Bannowsky is a retired autoworker, international educator, human rights activist, poet, publisher, and editor. A winner of the Academy of American Poets Prize, Bannowsky was granted both Emerging and Established Artists Fellowships from the Delaware Division of the Arts. While an adjunct instructor at the University of Delaware, he taught the Poetry of Empowerment and other courses. Currently, he is the poetry editor at Dreamstreets magazine and the host of 2nd Saturday Poets, Delaware’s longest-running poetry reading. Published works include The Milk of Human Kindness (poetry, 1986), Autoplant: a poetic monologue (1991, 2007), The Mother Earth Inn (novel, 2007), and Jacobo the Turko: a novel in verses (2021).
Traci Currie, Ph.D.
Dr. Currie has been in the communication studies field for over 20 years as a spoken word artist, university professor, teaching artist, multi-disciplinary facilitator, youth arts program director, and mixed media artist-activist. Her passion is fueled by the work she has done with youth in the public schools and juvenile detention system, as well as art programs focused on veterans and creative aging populations. Her focus is compassion-building that revolves around trauma and creating inclusive environments in exclusive spaces. This Jamaican American poet is a 2022 Anaphora Writing Fellow, 2024 University of Delaware Poetry As Activism Poet-in-Residence, currently the state coordinator for Poetry Out Loud in the state of Delaware, and an Assistant Professor at Goldey-Beacom College.
Steven Leech
Steven Leech is a Delaware writer, editor, radio host, and renowned cultural historian whose work focuses on the state’s literary, musical, and artistic legacy. A Wilmington-area native from a family with generations in Delaware, he has published hundreds of articles on music, current events, and cultural history, as well as poems, short stories, and four novels, and has served for decades as executive editor of Dreamstreets. His books include Valdemar’s Corpse, a survey of Delaware’s literary artists, and Boysie’s Horn, a history of jazz in Wilmington. As a WVUD FM radio host and Hall of Fame honoree, Leech has also helped preserve Delaware’s musical memory through his long-running program Boptime. His cultural scholarship extends to Delaware visual art, including his essay on William D. White and the state’s overlooked artistic traditions.
Our Team
Torrey Francis Malek
Rev. Torrey Francis Malek is a poet, writer, and public organizer whose work centers on building and sustaining poetry communities in Delaware. He serves as Director of Delaware Poets, Inc. and as Organizer/Coordinator for The Delaware Poets Almanac, a statewide project dedicated to preserving and celebrating Delaware’s poetic legacy. Named Poet Laureate of Valley Forge Military Academy in 2009, he has remained active as both a literary advocate and published poet, with work appearing in The Broadkill Review, Dreamstreets Magazine, Plants & Poetry Journal, and other literary journals. His poem “The Irish Walrus” was shortlisted for the 2023 Letter Review Prize for Poetry.