Founders

  • Shawn Welcome - President

    Shawn Welcome is the co-founder of the Literary Arts Council of Central Florida and the former Poet Laureate for the City of Orlando. An award-winning professional speaker and gifted storyteller, Shawn uses his words to inspire, educate and entertain audiences around the world.

    He has traveled extensively to perform, speak and facilitate writing and performance workshops dedicating his life to serving others and amplifying the voices of his community. In 2006 he founded Diverse Word, Central Florida’s longest-running open mic, which continues to provide a platform for creative expression nearly two decades later.

    Shawn’s artistry and leadership have led him to collaborate with Disney, Universal Orlando, Nike, the Orlando Magic, the Orlando Business Journal and the University of Central Florida among others. He has also curated powerful educational poetry experiences for the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, Bethune-Cookman University, the 33rd Street Jail and Orange County Public Schools.

    With a BA in English literature and an MA in applied sociology, Shawn blends creativity with cultural insight making appearances on National Public Radio and other media outlets to highlight his role in advancing the literary arts.

  • Alex Gurtis - Treasurer

    Alex Gurtis is the co-founder of the Literary Arts Council of Central Florida and is the author of When the Ocean Comes to Me (Bottlecap Press, 2024). He is an assistant editor for Burrow Press, a reader for Boulevard and the Florida Review, and runs a (very) occasional interview series at Barrelhouse.

    A ruth weiss Foundation Maverick Poet Award Finalist and a winner of Saw Palm’s 2022 Florida Fauna and Flora contest, Alex received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. His work as a poet, fiction writer, and critic has appeared in or is forthcoming in multiple anthologies and publications such as Barrelhouse, Harpur Palate, HAD, The Shore, Maudlin House, and West Trade Review among others.

    The former founder and owner of Zeppelin Books, an independent bookstore in Downtown Orlando, Alex is an avid believer in community and leaving the world a little better than he found it. Often found at the intersection of writing and place making, he serves on the board of the Kerouac Project of Orlando and teaches at Valencia College, where he organizes the Annual Ilyse Kusnetz Literary Festival.

Board of Directors

  • Ray Jimenez - Secretary

    Raymond Jimenez graduated from the University of Central Florida with a BFA. He works as a Teaching Artist and Regional Coordinator for Arts4All, which champions art culture and education for and by those with disabilities. In his classes he works to create opportunities for everyone to engage in art and to remove the barriers to inclusion so we might all see what is possible. 

    As a sculptor, and ceramicist, he deals with the concepts of identity, perception, language, and timelessness, but as a poet his work emphasizes the immediate, and experiential, especially in regards to slam. A spoken word poet himself, he has been on stage and competed at various local and national events for over a decade. Through the Federated States Poets Association he has been published twice in their yearly Blackberry Peach competition. He is the principal organizer of Orlando Poetry Slam which seeks to cultivate the opportunities and voices of burgeoning poets as well as to reinvigorate how people engage with poetry. Whether a coach for youth teams or adults, a host, an organizer for events for poetry and its expression across central Florida, or as a poet himself, Raymond Jimenez is constantly striving to expand the reach of art and poetry.

  • Dianne Turgeon Richardson - Board Member

    Dianne Turgeon Richardson has over 20 years of professional writing and teaching experience, which includes editing, publishing, web content creation, proposal development for government services contracting, and tutoring. A former composition professor, she remains active in the academic sphere as a member of the Creative Writing Program Advisory Council (CWPAC) at Full Sail University. Dianne has published short fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry in several print and online magazines and literary journals, including Cooweescoowee, Sundog Lit, the Christian Century, Glass Poetry, and the Florida Review, among others. She is currently the co-host of Loose Lips, a monthly reading series that takes place in Orlando’s Mills 50 District.

Southern Fried Team Members

Blu Bailey, Festival Director

Arjun Govindan, Marking Advisor

Kat Neal, Event Planning & Network Advisor

Riley Forest, Hospitality Advisor

Nyah Vanterpool, Development Advisor