- Street Roots
- Street Roots
- Street Roots
- Street Roots
- Street Roots
- Street Roots
- Street Roots
- Street Roots
- Street Roots
- Street Roots
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she/her
Kaia Sand became executive director of Street Roots in late 2017, two decades after she worked as a staff reporter for the Burnside Cadillac, the predecessor to Street Roots.
In those subsequent 20 years, Sand worked as a poet, artist, community organizer, and university professor, focusing particularly on economic injustice and homelessness — from a magic show she created about the financial collapse to the Right 2 Survive Ambassador Program she co-founded for housed people to learn from people experiencing homelessness. She taught at Portland State University, Pacific University, Willamette University and St. Mary’s College of Maryland; co-founded Vignettes & Verses, a writing and personal history institute; and performed and taught internationally, including in England, Ireland and Brazil. She has widely exhibited her artwork and served in residencies, from a public art commision at the City of Portland Archives and Records Center to the Despina International Artist Residency in Rio de Janeiro. A member of PEN America, she is author of three books of poetry — interval (a Small Press Traffic Book of the Year in 2004), Remember to Wave and A Tale of Magicians Who Puffed Up Money that Lost its Puff — and the co-author of Landscapes of Dissent: Guerrilla Poetry & Public Space. Two books in Jim Dine's Hot Dreams series are comprised of her text.
In 2019 she was awarded a Spirit of Portland award by Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty; and the regional Society of Professional Journalists small newsroom first prize for Best Column. Her high school alma mater, North Salem, inducted her into the Alumni Hall of Fame in 2022. The Economic Hardship Project has commissioned two recent poetry projects -- a collection of Street Roots poets for Orion Magazine and a commissioned poem, "This is How I Drew You," aired on To the Best of of Our Knowledge (PRX & Wisconsin Public Radio). She is the vice-chair of the board for International Network of Street Papers, North America, and on the advisory board for Portland State University Homelessness Research & Action Collaborative.
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