About Nikki Patin

Featured in The Guardian, Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Reader, on WBEZ, and on international television and radio, Nikki Patin has been writing, performing, educating, and advocating for over two decades. She has taught hundreds of workshops on performance poetry, body image, sexual assault prevention and LGBT issues.

Patin has performed, taught and spoken at colleges, universities, theaters and many other spaces such as the University of Chicago, Loyola University, DePaul University, Adler School of Psychology, Northwestern University, Cook County Jail, Riker’s Island prison, University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Goodman Theatre, Victory Gardens Theater, EXPO Chicago, Black Artists Retreat, the National Black Theater in Harlem, Brooklyn Museum and many others.

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. Patin was voted “Best Standout Performer” in the Dunedin Fringe Festival while headlining a tour of her solo performance piece, “The Phat Grrrl Revolution” throughout New Zealand and Australia in 2009. She has released several chapbooks, a full-length collection of writing and design, two EPs and a full-length album entitled “Bedroom Empire.”

In 2014, she made history when she addressed the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland on behalf of Black women survivors of sexual violence in the U.S. Nikki Patin holds an MFA in Creative Non-Fiction from the University of Southern Maine. Patin is the Executive Director of Calling All Crows and the founder and Executive Producer of Surviving the Mic, a survivor-led organization that has crafted its own methodology of holding brave and affirming writing and performance spaces for survivors of sexual harm. 

Nikki Patin is a queer, non-binary survivor of both domestic and sexual violence and single Mama/solo parent.