Big Poppa E

Big Poppa E is a spoken word artist and three-time HBO Def Poet who melds rhythmic verse, stand-up comedy, and dramatic monologue into explosive works that skewer pop culture, politics, and the pain and beauty of relationships. His musings have led to appearanceson BET's "The Way We Do It" sketch comedy series, National Public Radio, and CBS's "60 Minutes" Recently, his viral video "Why I Got Fired From Apple Computer" was viewed a million times on sites across the Internet, including YouTube and Google Video, garnering links from 13,000+ websites.
Big Poppa E burst onto the scene as a member of the '99 San Francisco Poetry Slam Team, co-champions of the '99 National Poetry Slam in Chicago and the only undefeated team out of 48 that year. The piece he performed on the finals stage -- "The Wussy Boy
Manifesto" -- has since become a rallying cry for outcasts, dorks, dweebs, and feebs everywhere, leading Ms. Magazine to proclaim him "an icon for effeminate males" and The Los Angeles Times to declare him "the leader of the new Wussy Boy movement." The piece is now one of the most popular poetry slam works performed by high school speech competitors across the country.
Big Poppa E has toured relentlessly on the spoken word highway since 2000, when he did 65 gigs across 27 states in just under four months. In the summer of 2003 alone, he logged over 21,000 miles on his Ford Windstar mini-van. He has headlined at more than 70 universities and colleges and performed 150+ poetry slam features in 40 states (including Hawaii and Alaska). Along the way, his tours have generated over a hundred stories in newspapers and magazines in the US, Canada, England, and Australia, including such publications as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The London Daily Express, The Sydney Morning Herald, and Bust Magazine.
Big Poppa E is the author of five books of poetry, two collections of haiku, two CDs, two DVDs, and a whole bunch of T-shirt and stickers. He has been published in Poetry Slam: The Competitive Art of Performance Poetry on Manic D Press, and his essay Slam Your Way Across America was included in the Poets and Writers Magazine collection The Practical Writer: From Inspiration to Publication. He has two kitties named Aretha and Thelonious who tour with him in the mini-van. He currently calls Austin, Texas, his home, and serves as DJ Hot Wings every week at the Austin Poetry Slam.