Poet & multi-instrumentalist Avotcja JIltonilro, (pronounced Avacha), is a card carrying New York born Music fanatic/sound junkie & popular Bay Area Radio DeeJay, as well as founder & Director of Avotcja & Modúpue, a Jazz, Latin Jazz, Blues & Poetry Ensemble. She’s a lifelong Musician/Writer/Educator/Storyteller & is on a shamelessly Spirit-driven melodic mission to heal herself. Avotcja talks to the Trees & listens to the Wind against the concrete & when they answer, it usually winds up in a Poem or Short Story.
Avotcja has been published in English & Spanish in the USA, Mexico & Europe. Avotcja teaches Creative Writing & Drama & is an ASCAP recording artist.
Describing herself as a “theater baby,” Avotcja grew up in New York City in a family of professional dancers and musicians who hailed from Puerto Rico. She insisted on embracing her heritage from the United States and Latin America, a linguistically flexible identity captured in her volume of poetry and prose With Every Step I Take (Taurean Horn Press). For many years Avotcja taught poetry to the incarcerated and she currently hosts two Bay Area radio programs and leads readings and teaches poetry.