Alyssa Matuchniak is a born-and-raised Southern Californian poet. A second-generation biracial American—the daughter of an Indian mother and an English-Polish father—she earned her Bachelor of Arts in Literature/Creative Writing from UC Santa Cruz and a Master of Arts in Teaching from UC Irvine. An award-winning educator in the South Bay, and a now-alternative public high school educator in her new home of Spokane, Washington, she dreams of creating a space for kids to learn, imagine, invent, dream, and liberate. She is the author of the debut poetry book Small Wars, Little Revolutions (World Stage Press, 2018).