Kevin Coval is a poet and activist who grew up in the Chicago suburbs and attended Ohio University, the University of Wales, and DePaul University. His socially engaged poems combine personal experience and appeals to action. Everything Must Go (2019), Schtick: Jewish Assimilation and Its Discontents (2013), and L-vis Lives! Racemusic poems (2011), Everyday People (2008), and Slingshots (A Hip-Hop Poetica) (2005), which was a finalist for the American Library Association’s Book of the Year award, are among Coval’s poetry books. He is also the editor of Haymarket Books’ BreakBeat Poets series.

Russell Simmons’ HBO show Def Poetry Jam has included Coval on several occasions. His other honours include the Association for Global New Thought’s Gandhi/King Peacemaking Award, the Douglas Wallace Distinguished Service Award, and residencies at the University of Illinois-Chicago Jane Addams Hull-House Museum and the University of Chicago Newberger Hillel Center.

Coval cofounded Louder Than A Bomb: The Chicago Teen Poetry Festival in his early twenties, which has grown into one of the country’s largest adolescent poetry slams and was the subject of the award-winning documentary of the same name. He is creative director of the nonprofit Young Chicago Authors and has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is a frequent contributor to the Huffington Post and WBEZ: Chicago Public Radio. Coval is based in Chicago.