The Way Forward

Posted on December 30, 2020 by admin

Join us virtually on Sunday, January 17th, 2021 for “The Way Forward,” a reading by the First Person Plural Reading Series featuring Ibrahim Abdul-Matin, Desiree C. Bailey, Roberto Carlos Garcia, Max S. Gordon, Sara Lippmann, Gloria Nixon-John, and Samantha So Lamb and Alex Torres who will read in memory of Anthony Veasna So. The reading is curated and hosted by Stacy Parker Le Melle. This is our fifth annual post-election reading, but instead of our focus being on “what just happened?” our readers will share work that speaks to what we must hold on to, what we must seek, what we must know and learn and feel as we find our way forward. The reading is from 6-8pm. Admission is free.

Please RSVP via Eventbrite here. You will be sent log-in instructions prior to the event.

About the readers:

Ibrahim is a bright, playful spirit who authentically reflects and acts on bold questions. His artful blending of idealism and spiritual commitment with pragmatic application has led him into government, public administration, parenthood, and media. His unique voice has helped elevate the environmental vision of Islam, the spiritual opportunity of parenting, and the cultural and political side of sports and the ethical imperative when considering decisions about how we manage land, waters, and open space.

Ibrahim Abdul-Matin is an urban strategist whose work focuses on deepening democracy and improving public engagement. He has advised two mayors on the best ways to translate complex decisions related to the cost, impacts, and benefits of environmental policy on communities. He is the founder of Green Squash Consulting a management consulting firm based in New York that works with people, organizations, companies, coalitions and governments committed to equity and justice. He is the author of Green Deen: What Islam Teaches About Protecting the Planet and in addition to the New York Advisory Board of the Trust for Public Land he is sits on the board of the International Living Future Institute encouraging the creation of a regenerative built environment and Sapelo Square whose mission is to celebrate and analyze the experiences of Black Muslims in the United States.

Desiree C. Bailey is the author of What Noise Against the Cane (Yale University Press, 2021), selected by Carl Phillips as the winner of the 2020 Yale Series of Younger Poets. She is also the author of the fiction chapbook In Dirt or Saltwater (O’clock Press, 2016) and has short stories and poems published in Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, American Short Fiction, Callaloo, the Academy of American Poets and elsewhere. Desiree was born in Trinidad and Tobago, and grew up in Queens, NY.

Poet, storyteller, and essayist Roberto Carlos Garcia is a self-described “sancocho […] of provisions from the Harlem Renaissance, the Spanish Poets of 1929, the Black Arts Movement, the Nuyorican School, and the Modernists.” Garcia is rigorously interrogative of himself and the world around him, conveying “nakedness of emotion, intent, and experience,” and he writes extensively about the Afro-Latinx and Afro-diasporic experience. Roberto’s third collection, [Elegies], is published by Flower Song Press and his second poetry collection, black / Maybe: An Afro Lyric, is available from Willow Books. Roberto’s first collection, Melancolía, is available from Červená Barva Press.

His poems and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY Magazine, The BreakBeat Poets Vol 4: LatiNEXT, Bettering American Poetry Vol. 3, The Root, Those People, Rigorous, Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Gawker, Barrelhouse, The Acentos Review, Lunch Ticket, and many others.

He is founder of the cooperative press Get Fresh Books Publishing, A NonProfit Corp.

A native New Yorker, Roberto holds an MFA in Poetry and Poetry in Translation from Drew University, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Max S. Gordon is a writer and activist. His work has also appeared on openDemocracy, Democratic Underground and Truthout, in Z Magazine, Gay Times, Sapience, and other progressive on-line and print magazines in the U.S. and internationally. His essays include “The Eroticism of Brutality – On Mary Trump’s ‘Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man’ and “How We’ll Get Over: Going to The Upper Room with Donald Trump.”

Sara Lippmann is the author of the story collections Doll Palace, long-listed for the 2015 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and JERKS (forthcoming from Mason Jar Press.) She was awarded an artist’s fellowship in fiction from New York Foundation for the Arts, and her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Millions, Fourth Genre, Slice Magazine, Diagram, Epiphany and elsewhere. She’s landed on Wigleaf’s Top 50, and her stories have been anthologized in Mamas and Papas: On the Sublime and Heartbreaking Art of Parenting (San Diego City Works Press) and forthcoming in New Voices: Contemporary Voices Confronting the Holocaust (Blue Lyra Press) and Best Small Fictions 2020 (Sonder Press). Raised outside of Philadelphia, she lives and teaches in Brooklyn and co-hosts the Sunday Salon NYC.

Gloria Nixon-John, Ph.D. Gloria’s novel The Killing Jar is based on the true story of one of the youngest Americans to have served on death row. Her memoir entitled Learning from Lady Chatterley is written in narrative verse and is set in Post WWII Detroit. Her chapbook, Breathe me a Sky, was recently published by The Moonstone Art Center of Philadelphia. She has published poetry, fiction, and essays in several literary journals and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize by A3 of London. Many of her essays and poems deal with her love of gardening, and with her love of, and care for, her horses.

Gloria has collected an oral history of sculptor Marshall Fredericks for The Marshall Fredrick’s museum in Saginaw Michigan and has done oral history work for the Theodore Roethke House, also in Saginaw, Michigan. She currently works as an independent writing consultant for schools, libraries, and individual writers. Gloria lives in rural Oxford, Michigan with her horses, dogs, cats, husband Michael.

As Anthony Veasna So agreed to read for “The Way Forward” just days before he passed away in San Francisco, CA, I am grateful to be able to keep Anthony as part of the lineup in order to remember him and to honor his work. He will be memorialized by his sister Samantha So Lamb and his partner Alex Torres. – SPL

Anthony Veasna So (deceased) is a graduate of Stanford University and earned his MFA in Fiction at Syracuse University. His debut story collection, Afterparties, is forthcoming from Ecco/HarperCollins in August 2021, and his writing has been or will be published in The New Yorker, n+1, Granta, and ZYZZYVA. Born and raised in Stockton, CA, he lived in San Francisco, where he worked on an essay collection and a stoner novel of queer ideas about three Khmer American cousins—a pansexual rapper, a comedian philosopher, and a leftist illustrator.

Samantha So Lamb was born and raised in Stockton, California. Her parents are Cambodian refugees who escaped the Khmer Rouge. First in her family to graduate from college, Samantha decided to become a teacher. She dedicates her career to teaching elementary grades in urban neighborhoods and deeply believes in equitable access to rigorous education for all students, especially black and brown children. She currently lives and teaches in Richmond, California with her husband, her son, and dog.

Alex Torres has taught English in Bogotá, Colombia as a Fulbright Scholar, reported on venture capitalists & startups for Business Insider, and published academic research on nineteenth and twentieth-century US literary culture.

Curator and Host:

Stacy Parker Le Melle is the author of Government Girl: Young and Female in the White House (HarperCollins/Ecco), 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. She is a 2020 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow for Nonfiction Literature. Her recent narrative nonfiction has been published in Callaloo, Apogee Journal, The Atlas Review, Callaloo, Cura, Kweli Journal, Nat. Brut, The Nervous Breakdown, The Offing, Phoebe, Silk Road and The Florida Review where the essay was a finalist for the 2014 Editors’ Prize for nonfiction. Originally from Detroit, Le Melle lives in Harlem where she curates the First Person Plural Reading Series. Follow her on Twitter at @stacylemelle.

What Just Happened? Writers Respond to Our American Crises – 2019 Edition

Posted on October 25, 2019 by admin

Join us on Sunday, November 10th at Silvana in Harlem for an evening of politics, culture, history and catharsis featuring writers Ibrahim Abdul-Matin, Max S. Gordon, David Tomas Martinez, Nara Milanich, Ed Morales and Sarah Van Arsdale, hosted by Stacy Parker Le Melle. This is our fourth annual election-time reading and if we can judge by the three prior readings, this one will be exceptional. You’ll leave energized. 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 Writers:

Ibrahim Abdul-Matin is an urban strategist whose work focuses on deepening democracy and improving public engagement. He has advised two mayors on the best was to translate complex decisions related to the cost, impacts, and benefits of environmental policy and of capital projects on communities. He has worked with Fortune 500 companies on sustainability and innovation. Previously, Ibrahim developed tools to connect, train, and fund grassroots activists. Since 2018, Ibrahim has worked with governments, CBO’s, and select corporate clients providing strategy and support around infrastructure policy, the land use process, strategies for climate adaptation and resilience. He is the author of Green Deen: What Islam Teaches About Protecting the Planet and earned his MPA at Baruch College’s Marxe School where he now lectures, serves on the Board of the International Living Future Institute and is a founding facilitator of the National Association of Climate Resilience Planners.

Max S. Gordon is a writer and activist. He has been published in the anthologies Inside Separate Worlds: Life Stories of Young Blacks, Jews and Latinos (University of Michigan Press, 1991), Go the Way Your Blood Beats: An Anthology of African- American Lesbian and Gay Fiction (Henry Holt, 1996). His work has also appeared on openDemocracy, Democratic Underground and Truthout, in Z Magazine, Gay Times, and other progressive online and print magazines in the U.S. and internationally. His essays include “Bill Cosby, Himself, Fame, Narcissism and Sexual Violence”, “Resist Trump: A Survival Guide”, “Family Feud: Jay-Z, Beyoncé and the Desecration of Black Art”, “A Little Respect, Just a Little Bit: On White Feminism and How ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ is Being Weaponized Against Women of Color”, and “Sticks and Stones Will Break Your Bones: On Patriarchy, Cancel Culture and Dave Chappelle”.

David Tomas Martinez is the author of two collections of poetry, Hustle and Post Traumatic Hood Disorder, both from Sarabande Books. Martinez is a Pushcart winner, CantoMundo fellow, a Breadloaf Stanley P. Young Fellow, NEA poetry fellow, and NEA Big Read author. Martinez lives in Brooklyn.

Nara Milanich is Professor of Latin American History at Barnard College, Columbia University. She teaches and researches the history of family, childhood, reproduction, gender, and law. Her most recent book, Paternity: The Elusive Quest for the Father (Harvard University Press, 2019), came out in June and received coverage in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Salon, NPR, Scientific American, CNN, and Time, among other places. The book explores the quest for a scientific proof of paternity and the social questions that, over the course of the twentieth century, these new genetic technologies were called on to answer. One of the book’s arguments is that since the Cold War, genetic tests of parentage have been used in immigration proceedings to fix the racial boundaries of the nation. Milanich has also worked as a translator and legal assistant for Central American mothers and children incarcerated in the country’s largest immigrant detention center, located in Dilley, Texas. She has written about this experience in the Washington Post, Dissent, and NACLA: North American Congress on Latin America. Last semester, she taught a class on the asylum crisis and took her undergraduate students to work in the detention center.

Ed Morales is an author and journalist who has written for The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Jacobin, and The Guardian. He was staff writer at The Village Voice and columnist at Newsday. He is the author of Latinx: The New Force in Politics and Culture (Verso Books, 2018), Living in Spanglish (St. Martins, 2002), and The Latin Beat: From Rumba to Rock (Da Capo Press, 2003). His new book, Fantasy Island: Colonialism, Exploitation, and the Betrayal of Puerto Rico was published in September 2019 by Bold Type Press. Morales is also a poet whose work has appeared in Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café (Henry Holt, 1993) and various small magazines, and his fiction has appeared in Iguana Dreams (HarperCollins, 1992), and Boricuas (Ballantine, 1994). He has participated in residencies as a member of Nuyorican Poets Café Live, touring as a spoken-word performer in several cities throughout the east coast, in California, Florida, Texas, and Denmark. Morales has appeared on CNN, Democracy Now, HBO Latino, CNN Español, WNBC-TV’s Visiones, WABC’s Tiempo, BBC television and radio, and The Laura Flanders Show, and hosted his own radio show, “Living in Spanglish,” on WBAI-FM in New York from 2015–2018.

Sarah Van Arsdale is the award-winning author of five books of fiction and poetry. She teaches in the Antioch/LA low-residency MFA program and at NYU, and leads writing workshops in Oaxaca, Mexico and Freeport, Maine. She co-curates the BLOOM reading series in Washington Heights.

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, Entropy, 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.

About Word Up Books:

Word Up is a multilingual, general-interest community bookshop and arts space in Washington Heights, New York City, committed to preserving and building a neighborhood in which all residents help each other to live better informed and more expressive lives, using books as an instrument of reciprocal education and exchange, empowering not only themselves, but their community. Word Up is run by volunteers from the uptown community. By hosting readings, concerts, screenings, art exhibitions, talks and workshops, community meetings, and other activities for kids and adults, we do our best to support and fortify the creative spirit unique to our diverse, uptown community.

What Just Happened? Writers Respond to Our American Crises

Posted on November 8, 2018 by admin

Join us on Sunday, November 18th at Silvana in Harlem for an evening of politics, culture, and history featuring writers Ibrahim Abdul-Matin, Judith Baumel, Tanya Domi, Max S. Gordon, Ricardo Hernandez, Ruby Shamir, and Vanessa K.Valdés. This is our third year hosting a post-election reading and if we can judge by the two prior readings, this one will be special. You’ll leave energized. The reading is from 6-8pm. Silvana is located at 300 W. 116th St near Frederick Douglass Blvd. Admission is free. There will be cake!

Ibrahim Abdul-Matin is an author, radio contributor, and environmental policy consultant. He has appeared on FOX News, Al-Jazeera, ABC News, and contributed to “The Takeaway.” As a writer, he’s appeared in The Washington Post, CNN.com, The Daily Beast, GOOD Magazine, ColorLines, Wiretap and Elan Magazine. His is the author of the book “Green Deen: What Islam Teaches About Protecting the Planet” and contributor to All-American: 45 American Men On Being Muslim. He is a former sustainability policy advisor to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and member of the founding team of the Brooklyn Academy for Science and the Environment. He currently serves as the Director of Community Affairs at the New York City Department of Environmental Protection and on the board of the International Living Future Institute. Ibrahim earned a BA in History and Political Science from University of Rhode Island and a master’s in public administration from Baruch College, City University of New York.

Judith Baumel is a poet, critic and translator. A recent Fulbright Fellow in Italy at the University of Genoa, she is Professor of English and Founding Director of the Creative Writing Program at Adelphi University. She served as president of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. Her books of poetry are The Weight of Numbers, Now, and The Kangaroo Girl.

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. Prior to joining the faculty in 2008, Domi served in the U.S. Army for 15 years and later worked for the late Congressman Frank McCloskey (D-IN-8), serving as his defense policy analyst in the early 1990s during the run-up to the Bosnian war. Domi was seconded by the U.S. State Department to the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina 1996-2000 and served as Spokesperson, Counselor to the Head of Mission and Chair of the OSCE Media Experts Commission. Domi has worked in a dozen countries, including Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia regarding democratic, economic, media and political transitional development, as well as human rights and gender/sexual identity issues. Domi is a widely published author and journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic Magazine, Al Jazeera America, The Christian Science Monitor, The Balkanist, Balkan Insight, Radio Free Europe and The Institute for War and Peace Reporting. She is a graduate of Central Michigan University where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism and Political Science in 1982 and earned a Masters of Arts degree at Columbia University in Human Rights in 2007. She is currently writing a book on the LGBTI human rights movement in the Western Balkans.

Max S. Gordon is a writer and performer. He has been published in the anthologies Inside Separate Worlds: Life Stories of Young Blacks, Jews and Latinos (University of Michigan Press, 1991), Go the Way Your Blood Beats: An Anthology of African-American Lesbian and Gay Fiction (Henry Holt, 1996). His work has also appeared on openDemocracy, Democratic Underground and Truthout, in Z Magazine, Gay Times, and other progressive on-line and print magazines in the U.S. and internationally. His essays include “Bill Cosby, Himself, Fame, Narcissism and Sexual Violence”, “A Different World: Why We Owe The Cosby Accusers An Apology”, “Resist Trump: A Survival Guide”, and “Family Feud: Jay-Z, Beyoncé and the Desecration of Black Art”

Ricardo Hernandez is the son of Mexican immigrants. A recipient of fellowships from Lambda Literary and Poets House, his work has appeared most recently in The Offing, Foundry, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. He’s an MFA candidate at Rutgers-Newark.

Ruby Shamir is an award-winning author, a ghostwriter, an adaptor of adult non-fiction for children, and a literary researcher based in New York City. She’s performed research, editorial planning, editing, and writing for many high profile non-fiction best-sellers, including books by Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, Sonia Sotomayor, and Tom Brokaw. Her work as a ghost-writer has been reviewed as “lyrical,” “eloquent,” “winning,” “thoughtful,” “personal and appealing.” To The Moon, her middle grade adaptation of Jeffrey Kluger’s Apollo 8, received a starred review from the School Library Journal. Shamir writes a series of picture books on American history and civics. What’s the Big Deal About Elections came out last August to favorable reviews. What’s the Big Deal About First Ladies, (Philomel, 2017) received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews. That book and What’s the Big Deal About Freedom (Philomel, 2017) were chosen for the International Literacy Association Children’s Choice Award list. Her public policy and political experience includes working for three and a half years in the Clinton White House and leading Hillary Rodham Clinton’s New York Senate office as well as policy development work for the AFL-CIO and writing coaching for the marketing department at IBM.

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Born and raised here in New York City, Vanessa K. Valdés is an associate professor at The City College of New York. In addition to the languages of Spanish and Portuguese, she teaches on the African diaspora in the Americas, that is, the histories and literatures of Black peoples in Latin America, including Brazil, and the Caribbean, and their communities here in the United States. Her most recent book is Diasporic Blackness: The Life and Times of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg (2017): it is the first to situate Mr. Schomburg squarely within his Black Latinx identity.

One Year Later: Writers, Artists, & Advocates Respond to Our American Crisis

Posted on October 22, 2017 by admin

One year ago, Donald J. Trump was declared winner of the 2016 US Presidential Election. We’ve been coping with crises – new, and continued – ever since. Join us on Tuesday, November 7^th (7-9pm) at Shrine Harlem as acclaimed writers, artist, and advocates respond. Bring your responses, too – they’ll be room for audience participation. Featured participants: Ibrahim Abdul-Matin, Yarimar Bonilla, Keesha Gaskins-Nathan, Max S. Gordon, PJ Marshall, Matthew Olzmann, Suzanne Russell, and Carla Shedd. Shrine is located at 2271 Adam Clayton Powell Blvd between 133^rd and 134^th, near the 2/3 135^th stop and the B/C 135^th stop. Admission is free.

Ibrahim Abdul-Matin is an author, radio contributor, and environmental policy consultant. He has appeared on FOX News, Al-Jazeera, ABC News, and contributed to “The Takeaway.” As a writer, he’s appeared in The Washington Post, CNN.com, The Daily Beast, GOOD Magazine, ColorLines, Wiretap and Elan Magazine. His is the author of the book Green Deen: What Islam Teaches About Protecting the Planet and contributor to All-American: 45 American Men On Being Muslim. He is a former sustainability policy advisor to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and member of the founding team of the Brooklyn Academy for Science and the Environment. He currently serves as the Director of Community Affairs at the New York City Department of Environmental Protection and on the board of the International Living Future Institute. Ibrahim earned a BA in History and Political Science from University of Rhode Island and a master’s in public administration from Baruch College, City University of New York.

Yarimar Bonilla is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Latino & Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University and currently a visiting scholar at the Russel Sage Foundation where she is completing a manuscript about Puerto Rico’s political, economic, and environmental crisis. She is the author of Non-Sovereign Futures: French Caribbean Politics in the Wake of Disenchantment and one of the founders of the website: Puerto Rico Syllabus: Essential Tools for Critical Thinking about the Puerto Rican Debt Crisis.

Keesha Gaskins-Nathan is the director for the Democratic Practice–United States program at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Ms. Gaskins-Nathan is a long-time organizer, lobbyist, and trial attorney. Prior to joining the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, she was senior counsel with the Brennan Center for Justice, serving as the director of the Redistricting and Representation program. Her portfolio included redistricting reform, voting rights, and elections, with a focus on voter suppression issues. Ms. Gaskins-Nathan is a frequent lecturer and writer on issues related to women and politics, movement building, and democratic reform. She is the author of a number of articles and publications related to voter suppression, voting rights, and redistricting. Ms. Gaskins-Nathan served as executive director for the League of Women Voters Minnesota, where she worked on a wide range of voting rights and civil rights issues. Prior to that, she was the executive director for the Minnesota Women’s Political Caucus. She worked for a number of years as a trial attorney, most notably with the firm Bowman and Brooke, LLC. Ms. Gaskins-Nathan also served as a special assistant appellate public defender for the State of Minnesota. She is a frequent commentator on voting rights and redistricting reform and regularly appears on numerous news and public affairs programming, including past appearances on PBS’s NewsHour, MSNBC, and Bill Moyers.

Max S. Gordon is a writer and performer. He has been published in the anthologies Inside Separate Worlds: Life Stories of Young Blacks, Jews and Latinos (University of Michigan Press, 1991), and Go the Way Your Blood Beats: An Anthology of African-American Lesbian and Gay Fiction (Henry Holt, 1996). His work has also appeared at The New Civil Rights Movement, openDemocracy, Democratic Underground and Truthout, in Z Magazine, Gay Times, Sapience, and other progressive on-line and print magazines in the U.S. and internationally. His published essays include, “Bill Cosby, Himself: Fame, Narcissism and Sexual Violence”; “Be Glad That You Are Free: On Nina, Miles Ahead, Lemonade, Lauryn Hill and Prince”, “The Cult of Whiteness” and “Faggot as Footnote: On ‘I Am Not Your Negro’, ‘Can I Get A Witness’, and ‘Moonlight'”.

Matthew Olzmann is the author of two collections of poems, Mezzanines, which was
selected for the Kundiman Prize, and Contradictions in the Design, both from Alice James Books. His writing has appeared in Best American Poetry, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Brevity, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day and elsewhere. He’s received fellowships from Kundiman, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Kresge Arts Foundation. Currently, he is a lecturer at Dartmouth College and also teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

PJ Marshall is an American actor known for his versatility, forceful onscreen presence, and athleticism. He began his career with guest roles on television, appearing on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Oz, and Law & Order: L.A. Marshall soon added movies to his resume, appearing in a variety of films, from Mississippi Grind, staring Ryan Reynolds, to Catch .44, starring Forest Whitaker, to Maggie, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Recent television credits include the plantation overseer Bill Meekes on WGN’s Underground, Detective Jack Colquitt on American Horror Story. His stage work includes Off-Broadway productions of Reservoir Dogs, Getting Out, Trailerville, Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind and Fool for Love, for which he received a Garland Award nomination. Prior to becoming an actor, Marshall was a professional dancer, martial artist, and competitive surfer. He studied acting at the Wynn Handman Studio.

Suzanne Russell is an activist artist, writer, and lawyer living in Copenhagen and New York. A big part of her social art practice for the past ten years has been providing free legal and social support to refugees, mostly unaccompanied teenagers in Europe. Since the election in 2016, Suzanne has been focusing on changing the political system in USA through a combination of artistic and practical actions. She is currently a graduate student at San Francisco Institute of Art and a volunteer lawyer for immigrants in the USA and Europe.

Carla Shedd is Associate Professor of Urban Education and Sociology at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Shedd received her Ph.D. in sociology from Northwestern University. Her research and teaching interests focus on: race/ethnicity; crime/criminal justice; law/inequality; urban education, and urban policy. Shedd’s book, Unequal City: Race, Schools, and Perceptions of Injustice (October 2015, Russell Sage), has won multiple academic awards including the prestigious C. Wright Mills Award given to the top book on social inequality each year. Unequal City deeply probes the intersections of race, place, education, and the expansion of the American carceral state using Chicago’s stratified education and residential landscape as its site of investigation. Shedd’s current research focuses on New York City’s juvenile justice system assessing how young people’s linked institutional experiences influence their placement on and movement along the carceral continuum.

What Just Happened? Writers Respond to the 2016 Presidential Election

Posted on November 4, 2016 by admin

On Tuesday, November 15^th, FPP will focus on the 2016 presidential election. As in: what just happened? We have a fantastic lineup of writers to help us make sense of – or complicate further – what has been a wild and wrenching year: Ibrahim Abdul-Matin; Grace Aneiza Ali; Hafizah Geter; Max S. Gordon; Hajar Husseini; Morgan Jerkins; and Chris Prioleau. We want to hear from you, too. Audience participation will be part of this program.

7:00pm-9:00pm at Shrine World Music Venue, 2271 Adam Clayton Powell Blvd.Near the 2/3 135th stop, and the B/C 135th stop.Happy Hour until 8pm. Cake will be served. Admission is free. Come talk politics, resistance, and the way forward with us in Harlem!

Ibrahim Abdul-Matin is the author of Green Deen: What Islam Teaches About Protecting the Planet and contributor to All-American: 45 American Men On Being Muslim. He is a former sustainability policy advisor to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and founder of the Brooklyn Academy for Science and the Environment. In 2013, Ibrahim was honored by NBC’s TheGrio.com as one of 100 African Americans Making history today. He currently serves as the Director of Community Affairs at the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. He has experience in the civic, public, and private sectors, and with government, public administration, and media. Ibrahim earned a BA in History and Political Science from University of Rhode Island and a master’s in public administration from Baruch College, City University of New York.

Grace Aneiza Ali is an independent curator, faculty member in the Department of Art & Public Policy, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University and Editorial Director of OF NOTE — an award-winning online magazine on art and activism. She has served as Editor & Digital Curator for several of the magazine’s art and social justice issues, including: The Water Issue, The Burqa Issue, The Imprisoned Issue, and The Immigrant Issue. Her essays on photography have been published in Harvard’s Transition Magazine, Nueva Luz Journal, Small Axe Journal, among others. In 2014, she received the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Curatorial Fellowship. In 2016, she served as curator for Un|Fixed Homeland at Aljira, a Center of Contemporary Art, an exhibition which brought together global Guyanese artists using photography to explore issues of migration and diaspora. Highlights of her curatorial work include Guest Curator for the 2014 Addis Ababa Foto Fest; Guest Curator of the Fall 2013 Nueva Luz Photographic Journal; and Co-Curator/Host of the Visually Speaking photojournalism public program series at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center. Ali is a World Economic Forum ‘Global Shaper’ and Fulbright Scholar. She holds an M.A. in Africana Studies from New York University and a B.A. in English Literature from the University of Maryland, College Park, where she graduated magna cum laude. Ali was born in Guyana and lives in New York City.

Hafizah Geter is a 2014 Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship finalist. Her poems have appeared in RHINO, Drunken Boat, Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Narrative Magazine, among others. She is on the board of VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts, a poetry editor for Phantom Books and co-curates the reading series EMPIRE with Ryann Stevenson.

Max S. Gordon is a writer and performer. He has been published in the anthologies Inside Separate Worlds: Life Stories of Young Blacks, Jews and Latinos (University of Michigan Press, 1991), and Go the Way Your Blood Beats: An Anthology of African-American Lesbian and Gay Fiction (Henry Holt, 1996). His work has also appeared at The New Civil Rights Movement, openDemocracy, Democratic Underground and Truthout, in Z Magazine, Gay Times, Sapience, and other progressive on-line and print magazines in the U.S. and internationally. His recent published essays include, “Bill Cosby, Himself: Fame, Narcissism and Sexual Violence”; “The Cult of Whiteness: On Donald Trump, #OscarsSoWhite and the end of America” and “Be Glad That You are Free: On Nina, Miles Ahead, Lemonade, Lauryn Hill and Prince”.

Hajar Husseini was born in 1991 in Iran to an Afghan immigrant family. After the collapse of the Taliban regime, her family came back to Afghanistan when she was thirteen. After graduation from high school, she worked for several non-profit organizations. She started writing for Afghan Women Writing Project in April 2015. Her involvement with AWWP lead her to collaborate on a song about domestic violence with Eleanor Dubinsky. Currently based in Troy, NY, she attends The Sage Colleges where she received a full undergraduate scholarship from the Initiative to Educate Afghan Women to study “Writing and Contemporary Thought.” She wants to become a writer, a journalist, and a literary translator.

Morgan Jerkins is a writer living in Harlem. Besides being a Contributing Editor at Catapult, her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, ELLE, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, and BuzzFeed, among many others. Her debut essay collection, This Will Be My Undoing, is forthcoming from Harper Perennial. She received her Bachelor’s in Comparative Literature from Princeton University and MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington College.

Chris Prioleau earned his MFA in Fiction from Columbia University, where he taught creative writing and helped found Apogee Journal, a journal of art and literature featuring work that explores and challenges identity politics. Chris writes fiction, essays, and sketch comedy. His work has been featured on The Awl and at sketch comedy events throughout the city. Chris is the Development & Communications Manager for NY Writers Coalition and lives in Brooklyn.

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Tag Archives: Ibrahim Abdul-Matin

The Way Forward

What Just Happened? Writers Respond to Our American Crises – 2019 Edition

What Just Happened? Writers Respond to Our American Crises

One Year Later: Writers, Artists, & Advocates Respond to Our American Crisis

What Just Happened? Writers Respond to the 2016 Presidential Election