Maurice Emerson Decaul is a former Marine, poet, essayist, and librettist whose work has been featured in The New York Times, Newsweek.com, Sierra magazine, Barely South Review, Epiphany, and others. A recipient of the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop Fellowship, he is a graduate of Columbia University and is working toward his MFA at New York University in 2013. His collaborations with noted poet and performer Mike Ladd and composer Vijay Iyer have led to the creation of two docudramas, Holding It Down and Sleep Song, which have premiered at New York City’s Harlem Stage, the Atlas Intersections Festival in Washington, D.C., and Odeon-Theatre de l’Europe in Paris. Maurice recently completed Ahimsa, an opera about the dreams of Martin Luther King Jr.