Cirelli, Michael: - Michael Cirelli is the Executive Director of Urban Word NYC, an award-winning youth literary arts organization, and also the author of Hip-Hop Poetry & the Classics (Milk Mug 2004), a standards-based teaching curriculum that engages the intersection between hip-hop and "classic" poetry. His first collection of poems, Lobster with Ol' Dirty Bastard (Hanging Loose, 2008), was a NY Times Best Seller for independent presses. He is a veteran of the National Poetry Slam scene, and was the only person to win the Grand Slam Finals in San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley all in the same year.