Christie Valentin-Bati is a hybrid poet and photographer interested in the beauty and horrors of the everyday. Unofficially, she's a suburban kid from Florida still trying to grow up, now transplanted to Chicago with too many plants to water. Her work has twice received an honorable mention in the Academy of American Poets Eileen Lannan Poetry Contest, commissioned by the ACLU of IL, runner-up in Columbia University's Black History Month Special Issue Contest, and exhibited in Davis Street Drawing Room and Porous Gallery. She is a Poet-in-Residence and Teaching Artist at Young Chicago Authors and Hugo House. More of her work can be found at https://bit.ly/christievb or @christie.vbati