Slash Coleman​

With a grandfather who was a dancer at the Moulin Rouge, a grandmother who was a watercolorist and a father who continues to work as a prolific sculptor,  Slash Coleman draws much of his material from being raised in the south by an offbeat, creative family.

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Growing up in his father's art studio and aboard the family art gallery which was a pirate ship in Richmond, VA, he got to see what worked and what didn't in terms of the business of art. In a dramatic world where everyone stood out in the name of artistic expression, Slash  would eventually embrace his inner business man pack his version of a briefcase - a tackle box full of paint brushes and sheet music - and find success by building upon the very mistakes that surrounded him.

He began his career as a creative entrepreneur at the age of 20 founding a successful jazz ensemble, a wellness clinic and later a commercial art agency. During the next fifteen years, he traveled all over the world, working on a fishing boat, running a massage college, developing a line of drinking teas, running his own Montessori school, operating a fight club, and working as an upholsterer - adventures that now comprise the very material of his popular stories.

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Best known as a writer and performer for PBS, including the award-winning Off-Broadway stage show, "The Neon Man and Me," his creative work is often compared to that of author David Sedaris. The host of “Slash Wednesday”, author of the “The Bohemian Love Diaries” (Lyons Press 2013), a contributor to the anthology on art “Unstuck” (Voyageur Press, 2011) and a personal perspectives blogger for Psychology Today, Coleman shapes much of his work with clever word play and poetic observations related to: family, spirituality, romantic relationships, American icons like Evel Knievel, and struggles to find a sense of home common with Generation X artists.

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Over the last decade, his storytelling work has been featured in The Washington Post, The New York Times, American Theatre Magazine, Backstage Magazine and multiple times on NPR including the series, “How Artists Make Money.” As a storyteller, he’s been featured at: The International Storytelling Center, The National Storytelling Festival (Exchange Place), the Oral History Performance Conference at Columbia University, and Pete Seeger’s Clearwater Festival.

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Currently at work on his 2nd PBS special about the re-birth of storytelling in America, Slash lives in New York City and splits his time between performing and writing new material for the stage, film, and television and maintaining his quest to discover how personal stories can be used to connect us more deeply in the digital age.