Wednesday May, 23 @7PM | KGB Bar
Celebrate the newly published anthology, Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism with four contributing poets. Lauren Clark, Cynthia Dewi Oka, Ruth Irupe Sanabria, and Wendy Xu will bring feminist fire to the East Village on what is sure to be an evening to remember.
Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism
A collection with a feminist ethos that cuts across race, gender identity, and sexuality.
Editors Danielle Barnhart and Iris Mahan have drawn on their profound knowledge of the poetry scene to put together an extraordinary list of poets taking a feminist stance against the new authority. What began as an informal collaboration of like-minded poets—to be released as a handbound chapbook—has grown into something far more substantial and ambitious: a fully fledged anthology of women’s resistance, with a portion of proceeds supporting Planned Parenthood and the Center for Reproductive Rights.
Representing the complexity and diversity of contemporary womanhood and bolstering the fight against racism, sexism, and violence, this collection unites powerful new writers, performers, and activists with established poets. Contributors include Denice Frohman, Elizabeth Acevedo, Sandra Beasley, Jericho Brown, Mahogany L. Browne, Danielle Chapman, Tyehimba Jess, Kimberly Johnson, Jacqueline Jones LaMon, Maureen N. McLane, Joyce Peseroff, Mary Ruefle, Trish Salah, Patricia Smith, Anne Waldman, and Rachel Zucker. Published by OR Books 2018.
LAUREN CLARK’s first collection of poems, Music for a Wedding, was selected by Pulitzer Prize-winner Vijay Seshadri for the 2016 AWP Donald Hall Prize in Poetry. It was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2017. They hold a BA in Classics from Oberlin College and an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan, where they were the recipient of four Hopwood Awards. They collaborate with Etc. Gallery in Chicago.
CYNTHIA DEWI OKA is the author of Salvage: Poems and Nomad of Salt and Hard Water. A two-time Pushcart Prize Nominee, her poetry has appeared widely online and in print. She has been awarded the Fifth Wednesday Journal Editor’s Prize in Poetry, and scholarships from the Voices of Our Nations (VONA) and Vermont Studio Center. As a 2016 Leeway Foundation Art and Change Grantee, she partnered with Asian Arts Initiative to create Sanctuary: A Migrant Poetry Workshop for immigrant poets in Philadelphia. She has also served as a poet mentor for The Blueshift Journal’s Speakeasy Project. Originally born and raised in Bali, Indonesia, Cynthia is currently based in Philadelphia, where she works as a Community Organizer with the New Sanctuary Movement, an interfaith immigrant justice organization. She is an MFA candidate at Warren Wilson College.
RUTH IRUPÉ SANABRIA’s first collection of poetry, The Strange House Testifies (Bilingual Press), won 2nd place (Poetry) in the 2010 Annual Latino Book Awards. Her second collection of poems, Beasts Behave in Foreign Land, received the 2014 Letras Latinas/ Red Hen Press Award and was published in 2017. Her poems have appeared in anthologies such as Women Writing Resistance and U.S. Latino Literature Today. She works as a high school English teacher and lives with her husband and three children in Perth Amboy, NJ.
WENDY XU is most recently the author of Phrasis (Fence Books, 2017). The recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, Boston Review, Poetry, A Public Space, BOMB, and widely elsewhere. Born in Shandong, China, in 1987, she lives in Brooklyn and is Poetry Editor for Hyperallergic.
KGB BAR In the years since it opened in 1993, KGB has become something of a New York literary institution. Writers hooked up in the publishing world read here with pleasure and without pay to an adoring public over drinks almost every Sunday evening (fiction), Monday evening (poetry), and most Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. The crowd loves it. Admission is free, drinks are cheap and strong, and the level of excellence is such that KGB has been named best literary venue in New York City by New York Magazine, the Village Voice, and everyone else who bestows these awards of recognition.
85 E 4th St, New York, NY 10003