Denice Frohman

Denice Frohman is a poet and performer from New York City. A Pew Fellow and Baldwin-Emerson Fellow, she’s received additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts, CantoMundo, Headlands Center for the Arts, the National Association of Latino Arts & Cultures, Leeway Foundation, Blue Mountain Center, Millay Colony, and is a former Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion. She has performed widely for nearly two decades on national and international stages from The Apollo to The White House. Her work explores the complexities of language, lineage, queerness, and the colonial relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico. As a queer Nuyorican, she is the daughter of Puerto Rican and Jewish parents. She also played professional basketball in Puerto Rico after college where she earned a four-year athletic scholarship, and earned her Master’s in Education from Drexel University.

Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Poem-A-Day, The Rumpus, ESPNW, The Acentos Review, The Adroit Journal, Kweli Journal, Split This Rock's The Quarry, and elsewhere. Videos of her poetry performances have collectively garnered over 10 million views online. She’s been featured in Elle Magazine, Buzzfeed, Cosmopolitan, AutoStraddle, and Upworthy. She has also appeared on and co-hosted an episode of NPR’s Code Switch podcast.

Her poetry has been commissioned by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, ESPN, Indeed, mitú, the City of Philadelphia, GALAEI (Gay and Lesbian Latino Aids Education Initiative), Greater Philadelphia Cultural Affairs, and Twitter as part of the #HereWeAre campaign to uplift women's voices, which aired during the Oscar’s on national television in 2018. She has written creative content for major brands, collaborated with arts organization, and worked with grassroots non-profits on social justice campaigns. Her collaboration with TED produced an award-winning animated video of “Accents,” which won first place at the Annecy International Animation Festival.

As a facilitator, Frohman has led workshops for adults and young people at The Watering Hole Retreat (faculty), Intercultural Journeys, Girls Leadership Institute, Youth Study Juvenile Detention Center, and at hundreds of schools and organizations. A former Program Director at The Philly Youth Poetry Movement, she worked to create safe spaces for Philadelphia teens to discover the power of their voices. Her passion to mentor young people and encourage them, especially LGBT youth and youth of color, to tell their stories has always been a central part of her work. Along with a collective of Puerto Rican writers, she co-organized #PoetsforPuertoRico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria to raise funds and consciousness about the ongoing political and humanitarian crisis on the island. She lives in Philadelphia, PA.