Lottie E. Porch is an educator and performing artist whose passion is writing, directing and producing theatre that enlightens and entertains. Miss Porch served in the public schools of Teaneck, New Jersey where she taught both English and Theatre for 25 years.  Currently, she is an adjunct professor at New York University teaching Integrating the Arts and New Student Seminar.

Lottie is the founder and producing director of SOULS’S DESIRE, a collective of teacher-artists who share their gifts through song, poetry and dance. SOUL’S DESIRE has presented programs for both Women and Black History and entertains with bold fervor, laughter and honest sharing. Lottie’s directing credits include work on more than 25 plays and musicals. In July of 2006, Lottie traveled to Lagos, Nigeria to work with young people on the classic drama, “A Raisin in the Sun.”

As an actress Lottie has performed on both stage and screen…her most notable performance was as the lead role in Nzinga’s Children, which ran for 6 months off-Broadway at the National Black Theatre.  Lottie’s singing has been showcased at the historic Abyssinian Baptist Church and the Riverside Church, both in NYC.

However, perhaps above all, Lottie is a writer. Her poems have been published in various journals including LIPS and the Paterson Poetry Review. Her poem, “Roundabout Table Love” won the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award and was featured in an exhibit about Black Family Life at the Haggerty Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She has received two Dodge Foundation fellowships as well as scholarship awards to study and write in workshops in Massachusetts, Vermont, and Paris, France.

In 2001, Lottie researched and wrote the narration for a musical program called, “Somebody’s Calling My Name – A History of Gospel Music.” The program was performed in NYC and upstate New York, and each time the narrator was the late, great Mr. Ossie Davis.

Lottie lives in Hackensack, NJ. Always she thanks God for her life and creative abilities.