Beau Sia

Beau Sia is an American slam poet and performer who was born in Ohio and raised in Oklahoma City, where he first encountered spoken word poetry through MTV as a teenager. In 1995 he moved to New York City to study dramatic writing at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. He began performing at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and made the Nuyorican National Poetry Slam team in 1996; the documentary SlamNation followed that team, which placed third nationally. Sia won National Poetry Slam championships in 1997 and 2000 and took second place in the individual competition in 2001. He created the parody A Night Without Armor II: The Revenge and published books and spoken-word recordings. His screen work includes Slam (1998), Murder Party (2007) and Rachel Getting Married (2008), along with appearances in Def Poetry and its Broadway version.