Board of Directors
WordSpace’s Board is comprised of working writers, critics, musicians, artists and educators.
Charles Dee Mitchell, President
Adrienne Cox Trammell, Chair, Governance Committee
Stanley W. Thomas, Co-Treasurer
Ben Yip, Co-Treasurer
Venus Opal Reese, Chair, Resource Committee
Steve Paul, Chair, New Media and Communications
Jean Lamberty, Secretary
Martha Heimberg, Board Member
Roderick Goudy, also known as Rock Baby, Board Member
Sanderia Smith, Board Member
Sharon Bailey, Board Member
STAFF
Karen X Minzer, also known as Karen X, Program Director
Austin Terrill, Communications Coordinator
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President
Charles Dee Mitchell is a freelance writer based in Dallas. Locally he has been a contributor to The Dallas Observer and The Dallas Morning News, and he is a frequent contributor to Art in America. He has written essays for exhibitions at The Dallas Museum of Art, The Columbus (Ohio) Museum of Art, The UCLA Armand Hammer Museum, and many other commercial and non-profit exhibition spaces. In 2008 he retired from Half Price Books, Records, and Magazines, where he was Executive Vice President of New Media Purchases and Proprietary Publishing. He is also active on the Dallas Video Festival board. Read Dee’s Blog at www.potatoweather.blogspot.com
Immediate Past President
Adrienne Cox Trammell is a co-founder of WordSpace. She has worked in nonprofit administration for 20 years in fund development, program coordination, management consulting services, database administration and office management. Currently Adrienne Trammell is Governance Committee Chair.
Secretary
Jean Lamberty has been an educator in a variety of roles for the past 17 years. Her publications include An Extreme Risk, Illya’s Honey, Sentence,and the Houston Poetry Festival. She currently also works with the nonprofit Room to Read.
Co-Treasurer
Stanley W. Thomas graduated from the University of North Texas with a BBA in accounting after spending two years as a music major in the jazz program at UNT. Currently an Accounting Supervisor for a subsidiary of JPMorgan / Chase in Lewisville, TX . He has worked in accounting in the financial services industry for the last 30 years. For several years he also taught as an Adjunct Instructor in business at the Community College level.
Co-Treasurer
Ben Yip holds a BA in Anthropology and is working on his MBA at SMU.
Chair, Resource Committee
Venus Opal Reese, BFA, MA, MFA, Ph.D., is an award winning performer, playwright, director, choreographer and poet. She has performed at the Sorborne under the auspices of the W.E.B. Dubois Institute at Harvard University, La Mama Umbria International, Spoleto, Italy, Universita di Padova, the L.A. Women’s Festival and the Hip-Hop Theatre Festival, NYC. Dr. Reese’s research links Africa, the Middle Passage, Antebellum Slavery, minstrelsy and popular culture. She offers and designs courses in Spoken Word, Arts and Performance, Acting, Performativity, Cultural Studies, Womanism/Feminism, Queer Theory, Literary Theory, Critical Race Theory, and Identity and Media. She is a tenured professor of Aesthetic Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas.
Chair, New Media and Communications
Steve Paul is an award-winning audio and video engineer with over 18 years’ experience in the recording industry. After opening his third recording studio, he began studying photography and videography. Pursuing his interest in art, sound, and design he opened the gallery space and recording studio, Steve Paul Productions. He holds a B.S in Communications from University of Texas at Arlington.
Martha Heimberg is associate professor of English at Northwood University in Cedar Hill, Texas, creative writing instructor at Richland College and arts critic for Theater Jones and Turtle Creek News. Five-time winner of Dallas Press Club’s Katie Award for arts criticism, community affairs and business writing, she has also won the Texas Historic Commission Griffin Award and the Sierra Club Award for writing. She has written over 200 features and reviews on live theater, visual and literary arts, and community affairs for Texas publications, including D Magazine, Texas Monthly, Lone Star Book Review and others. She originated DART’s Poetry in Motion program, a national project placing contemporary and classic poems on buses and trains, and is a founding member of the Dallas-Fort Worth Theater Critics Forum.
Roderick Goudy, also known as Rock Baby, is a graduate of University of North Texas with a Bachelor’s of Applied Arts and Science with an emphasis in education. In 1993, he began his career as an educator with P.A.C.E. Head Start in Mississippi. In 1999, Roderick began his career as a poet where he has become a nationally known performance poet performing across North America including television appearances. In 1998, Roderick Goudy began substituting teaching with Dallas Independent School District and from 1999-2002 held the position of PTA President. Roderick began organizing poetry competitions as the City of Dallas Slam Master for Dallas Poetry Slam in 2003. As a Slam Master, he has combined his love for art and education to organize and implement area writing and performance workshops, mentor young artists, guest lecture for community colleges and universities throughout the DFW Metroplex and nationally. Roderick has served as an art instructor with Junior Players Guild for over 3 years providing instruction in dance, writing, and theatre while addressing issues of bullying, self-esteem, and healthy conflict resolution. He is a frequent guest speaker for area schools addressing bullying, communication and other life skills critical to student success. Since 1988, he has held positions in the U.S. Army as a communications specialist, a pre-school, after-school and substitute teacher, committee member with WordSpace, a literary non-profit, board member with Family Care Connections, a social service non-profit with emphasis on healthy families and fatherhood initiatives, and Slam Master of Dallas Poetry Slam.
Sanderia Smith holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Arizona State University and a B.S. in Accounting from University of Arkansas. She has taught Creative Writing at Florida Community College, Central Texas College, Mesa Community College, Arizona State University and Andre House Homeless Shelter in Phoenix, Arizona. She is the recipient of a Writers In Paradise Scholarship and Vermont Studio Center, Writers Residency. Sanderia also serves on the board of Texas CAN Academy.
Sharon Bailey is a former board president and a 20 year veteran of nonprofit sector, and works as a consultant for nonprofit management.
STAFF
Program Director, Karen X Minzer aka Karen X is a writer/poet/gypsy, published by the Austin Sun in the 70s, Paris Records in the 80s and Wowapi, 90s to present. In 1976 she discovered WordSpace founder, Robert Trammell, reading his poetry at Old City Park across the street from her home at the historic (grundgy) Ambassador Hotel. She is a former student and special friend to Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, studied in poetics apprenticeship with Allen Ginsberg and assisted him with transcribing his diary notebooks to manuscript. She has also studied with Robert Creeley, Quincey Troupe, Ed Sanders, Galway Kinnell, Gary Snyder, Anne Waldman, Jack Myers, Larry Fagin. With alot of help from alot of friends, she has curated thousands of writers for over 30 years–including Literary Festivals for SMU and Eastfield College, readings for Paperbacks Plus, Writers Garret, WordSpace, Dial A Poet Television in Dallas and Boulder, Starck Club, Caravan of Dreams, and Morrison Street for Paris Records. Ms. X is a veteran performer/warm up shouter for songwriter-poets such as Frank Black, John Cale, Bad Brains, et al. Dharma Broad and student of Michelle Andrie, Angela Farmer and Victor Van Kooten in Eftalou, Greece, Karen has also taught creative writing at Brookhaven College and as a Writer-in-the-Schools and teaches yoga at Tranquilo Studio.
Communications Coordinator, Austin Terrill is the owner and artistic director of Incense and Peppermints.
