Nikki Patin is a writer, performer, and educator whose practice addresses issues of body image, sexual assault, and the needs of the LGBT community. Nikki has presented hundreds of workshops and performances at elementary schools, high schools, and universities over her two decade career, including addressing the United Nations in Geneva on behalf Black women survivors of sexual violence. Patin was featured on the fourth season of HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, was voted one of 30 under 30 most influential LGBTQ people in Chicago by Windy City Times and took the gold medal in the 2006 Gay Games International LGBT poetry slam. In addition, Patin was voted “Best Standout Performer” in the Dunedin Fringe Festival while headlining a tour of her one-woman show, “The Phat Grrrl Revolution” throughout New Zealand and Australia. She is the creator of Surviving the Mic, an organization dedicated to creating safe spaces for the creation and telling of stories of survivors of all kinds of trauma, with a special focus on Black- and female-identified survivors of sexual and domestic violence. Nikki holds an MFA in Creative Non-Fiction from the Stonecoast MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine.
