Join us on Sunday, March 8th for what promises to be an extraordinary night! We’ll be joined by poets and writers Joey De Jesus, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Tanya Domi, and Carolyn Ferrell, hosted by Stacy Parker Le Melle. The reading is from 6-8pm. Silvana is located at 300 W. 116th St near Frederick Douglass Blvd.
Books sold by Word Up! Books. Admission is free. There will be cake!
Please RSVP via Eventbrite here.
About the featured readers:
Joey De Jesus is the author of HOAX (Operating System, 2020), NOCT- The Threshold of Madness (The Atlas Review, 2019), and co-author, alongside Sade LaNay, of Writing Voice into the Archive vol. 1, edited by Jennifer Tamayo with support from UC Berkeley’s Center for Race and Gender. Joey received the 2019-20 BRIC ArtFP Project Room Commission and 2017 NYFA/NYSCA Fellowship in Poetry. Poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Artists Space, Barrow Street, Bettering American Poetry, The Brooklyn Rail, Brooklyn Magazine, The New Museum, The Newtown Literary Review, Southern Humanities Review, Symmetries: An Anthology of the Dominique Levy Gallery, and elsewhere. They’ve performed in Art Omi, Basilica Soundscape, The Nuyorican, The Poetry Project and elsewhere. Joey is an Adjunct Lecturer at BMCC and a member of the Ridgewood Tenants Union. Joey is on hiatus at Apogee Journal, a literary non-profit committed to uplifting the voices of writers at the peripheries of literary inclusion and sits on the advisory board of No, Dear Magazine. Joey lives in Ridgewood, Queens, where they are the hardest-Left candidate for New York State Assembly District 38 ever. Photo credit: Dan Gutt & RAGGA NYC.
A writer, vocalist and performance/sound artist, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs is the author of TwERK (Belladonna, 2013). Diggs has presented and performed at California Institute of the Arts, El Museo del Barrio, The Museum of Modern Art, and Walker Art Center and at festivals including: Explore the North Festival, Leeuwarden, Netherlands; Hekayeh Festival, Abu Dhabi; International Poetry Festival of Copenhagen; Poesiefestival, Berlin; and the 2015 Venice Biennale. As an independent curator, artistic director, and producer, Diggs has presented events for BAMCafé, Black Rock Coalition, El Museo del Barrio, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, and the David Rubenstein Atrium. As a vocalist, she has worked with Guillermo E. Brown, Rashida Bumbray, Burnt Sugar, Gabri Christa, Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade, DJ Logic, Lisa E. Harris, Vijay Iyer, Val Jeanty, Mike Ladd, Paloma McGregor, Mendi + Keith Obadike, Vernon Reid, Towa Tei, and Edwin Torres. Diggs has received a 2020 C.D. Wright Award for Poetry from the Foundation of Contemporary Art, Whiting Award (2016) and a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship (2015), as well as grants and fellowships from Cave Canem, Creative Capital, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission, among others. She lives in Harlem.
Tanya Domi is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and a faculty affiliate of the Harriman Institute where she teaches human rights and international relations in the Western Balkans. She is also an Adjunct Lecturer at the Roosevelt Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, CUNY where she teaches global contemporary LGBTQ human rights. As a scholar on the Balkans, she has published numerous journal and book chapters and has been a frequent commentator on Balkan issues. Domi served in the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1996-2000 where she worked on the Dayton Peace Accords. Previously she has worked as a Congressional aide and also was a chief of staff in the Hawaii State Senate. Domi is a widely published author and journalist and currently is the host of The Thought Project podcast at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Her writings has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic Magazine, Al Jazeera America, The Christian Science Monitor, Balkan Investigations Research Network, Balkan Insight, Radio Free Europe and The Institute for War and Peace Reporting.
Carolyn Ferrell is a professor of writing at Sarah Lawrence College and the author of the short-story collection, Don’t Erase Me, awarded the Art Seidenbaum Award of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, John C. Zachiris Award given by Ploughshares, and Quality Paperback Book Prize for First Fiction. Her stories have been anthologized in Best American Short Stories 2018; The Best American Short Stories of the Century; Giant Steps: The New Generation of African American Writers; The Blue Light Corner: Black Women Writing on Passion, Sex, and Romantic Love; and Children of the Night: The Best Short Stories by Black Writers, 1967 to the Present. She is the recipient of grants from the Fulbright Association, German Academic Exchange (D.A.A.D.), City University of New York MAGNET Program, and National Endowment for the Arts (Literature fellow for 2004).
About the host:
Stacy Parker Le Melle is the author of Government Girl: Young and Female in the White House (HarperCollins/Ecco) and is a contributing editor to Callaloo. She was the lead contributor to Voices from the Storm: The People of New Orleans on Hurricane Katrina and Its Aftermath (McSweeney’s) and chronicles stories for The Katrina Experience: An Oral History Project. Her recent narrative nonfiction has been published in Callaloo, The Offing, Apogee Journal, The Nervous Breakdown, Silk Road Review, The Butter, Cura, The Atlas Review, and The Florida Review where the essay was a finalist for the 2014 Editors’ Prize for nonfiction. Originally from Detroit, Le Melle is the founder of Harlem Against Violence, Homophobia, and Transphobia, and the curator and co-founder of Harlem’s First Person Plural Reading Series.
This event is funded in part by Poets & Writers through public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
