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Storytelling. Storyteller.

Clara Rose Thornton is a culture journalist, radio and television broadcaster, spoken word artist, poetry workshop instructor, and event organizer. Hailing from Chicago, she has lived in New York City, Vermont, Oregon, and Quebec in North America; in Paris, Croatia, and Germany in Europe; and currently resides in Dublin. In Chicago she founded the company InkBlot Complex to incorporate writing, editing, and entertainment services under one umbrella. InkBlot Complex focuses on the arts and their intersection with social justice, identity politics, history, and place.

A lively, erudite broadcaster, in Ireland Clara Rose is a film critic on "Arena," the national radio arts program from Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ); discusses film, race, and feminism on the likes of "The Ryan Tubridy Show" and "The History Show" on RTÉ Radio 1; and appeared regularly as a television culture journalist on RTÉ 1's "Morning Edition." Print cultural criticism has appeared in the Irish Independent, the Irish Times, District Magazine, Artscope, and the Chicago classic, ​Stop Smiling: The Magazine for High-Minded Lowlifes. From 2008 to 2012 she wrote “Southerly Exposure,” the weekly fine arts column of the Rutland Herald, Vermont's Pulitzer-Prize-winning daily. Clara Rose counts Harvard, Facebook, and Dublin Web Fest among brand journalism clients.

Clara Rose is a multiple poetry slam champion, including the  2014/15/16 Leinster (Dublin) Slam Poetry Champion, also taking third place in the 2015 All-Ireland Poetry Slam in Belfast. Nuyorican Poets Cafe in lower Manhattan honored her at the onset of 2015 with a half-hour featured artist set. Fall 2014 saw a tour of Ireland as the headlining performer for the nation's inaugural Black History Month, which she was instrumental in founding. The year prior, she toured Europe as Vice & Verses, an InkBlot Complex creation and site-specific performance involving her spoken word set to live music, co-composed with native musicians in the countries in which the shows were performed [Denmark, Croatia, France, Ireland]. She's taught the InkBlot Complex Poetry Workshop in South Korea, Ireland, Canada, and the United States, and judged two Poetry Out Loud competitions [US]. In Ireland she's been featured at Electric Picnic, Body & Soul, International Literature Festival Dublin, Lingo Festival, Project Arts Centre, Trinity College, and University Colleges Cork and Dublin. A full-time touring performer, her provocative shows may be experienced in countries around the world. And in Ireland, InkBlot Complex presents Vice & Verses: Neo-Soul Brigade on last Tuesdays bimonthly.

Co.

For an extensive roster of corporate clients, organizations, musicians, visual artists, writers, and students, a range of creative, marketing, and speaking services are available. Services are filtered through the planning and expertise of a career artist and entrepreneur with a small team.
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A day-in-the-life documentary about Clara Rose, which aired on Croatian national TV in 2013, is here. Her CV is here. A bio for media use is here. 

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