Andrea Panzeca is a writer, visual artist, dancer, researcher, and educator. A longtime KID smART teaching artist, she has used visual art and creative writing strategies to help students meet academic and social/emotional objectives in public school classrooms. She has taught youth visual art and dance at the New Orleans Museum of Art, Contemporary Arts Center, and Lelia Haller School of Ballet, and environmental education at UNO’s Coastal Education and Research Facility. With support from The Platforms Fund, she developed a multidisciplinary project combining experiential movement and reflection through art; she facilitated adult workshops in this practice through LMNL’s Zoom Workshop Series, the New Orleans Poetry Festival, and the Gulf Coast Association of Creative Writing Teachers. Panzeca earned her M.F.A. in creative nonfiction writing at the University of New Orleans, where she was associate nonfiction editor of Bayou Magazine. Her awards include the Carol Gelderman Award for Nonfiction Thesis, the Andrea Saunders Gereighty/Academy of American Poets Award, and two Pabst Cultural Endowment Scholarships. Her nonfiction publications include personal essays, cultural criticism, and a scholarly article on Zora Neale Hurston. Her poetry has been anthologized in The Poetry Buffet, the LMNL Anthology, Verse of April, and Hurricanes: Katrina & Rita at 20. Her poems have been displayed in Lucky Bean Poetry’s Broadside Series and INFOBAHN: Associate Artist Alumni Exhibition at Atlantic Center for the Arts. Panzeca is the author of poetry chapbooks Rusted Bells and Daisy Baskets, and Weird… Joe Pesci.
