National Poetry Month | diVERSE voices

When

Thursday April 4, 2019: 7:00pm to 8:30pm  Add to Calendar /   Add to Google Calendar

Where

Downtown Library: 4th Floor Meeting Room

Description

A diverse nation deserves diverse poetry, Celebrate National Poetry Month with leading poets of color from Ann Arbor’s vibrant poetry scene as they explore pressing themes of identity, heritage, culture, race, resistance, and more. This event will be curated by local writer Frances Kai-Hwa Wang.

• Jasmine An comes from the Midwest. Her chapbook, Naming the No-Name Woman, won the 2015 Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in HEArt, Stirring: A Literary Collection, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Nat. Brut and Waxwing, among others. Currently, she is pursuing a PhD in English and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan.
   
• Aldo Leopoldo Pando Girard is the current Youth Poet Laureate of Ann Arbor. Aldo believes firmly in bringing people together and making people feel seen through poetry and hopes to do so in his own poetry. He is a recent graduate of Pioneer high school, former Ann Arbor Youth Slam Team member, and a freshman at the University of Michigan, studying Vocal Performance and Engineering.
   
• Marlin M. Jenkins was born and raised in Detroit. He teaches in the English Department Writing Program at the University of Michigan and in the Literary Arts Program at the Neutral Zone.
   
• Leslie McGraw is the creative inspiration behind the Bookbound Open Mic & Share Poetry Series and the Life By Poetry online community. Her debut poetry collection, Emergencies of the Heart, was published in 2014; and her essay, “Roses Come in Black, Too,” was published in the As/Us Women of the World Journal. You can follow her on Twitter @LifebyPoetry.
   
• Saleem Peeradina is the internationally esteemed author of several books of poetry, memoir, and essays. He is the editor of Contemporary Indian Poetry in English, one of the earliest and most widely used texts in South Asian literature courses. He has served as writer-in-residence from Chelsea District Library to the American College in Madurai, India and is Professor Emeritus at Siena Heights University.
   
• Cozine A. Welch, Jr. is a formerly incarcerated published poet and writer. A staff member of the University of Michigan’s Prisoner Creative Arts Project (PCAP), he now teaches at the University and is managing editor of the Michigan Review of Prisoner Creative Writing literary journal.
   
• Hasna Ghalib is a poet, activist and peer-to-peer educator. She attends Pioneer High School and is a Neutral Zone youth leader, working to address racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia. She was born in Baghdad, Iraq, and moved to the United States as a refugee in 2008. She made the 2018 Louder than a Bomb Ann Arbor poetry team, represented Ann Arbor at the Write To The City national youth poetry institute, and opened for poet Mojha Khaf at UM. 
   
• Chien-An Yuan is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work has been featured in The New Yorker, Salon, ArtSlant, Huffington Post, and WNYC. Past exhibitons include The Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Gene Siskel Film Center, Museum of Chinese in America NYC, Syrup Loft, Zhou B Arts Center, Asian American Cultural Center of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Hyde Park Art Center, and Gallery 312.
   
• Frances Kai-Hwa Wang is a journalist, essayist, speaker, educator, and poet focused on issues of diversity, race, culture, and the arts. Her poetry has appeared in Cha Asian Literary Journal, Kartika Review, and the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. She teaches Asian/Pacific Islander American studies at the University of Michigan.