Events

In honor of Black Lives Matter, The Writers Studio pays tribute to Every Shut Eye Ain't Asleep, An Anthology of Poetry by African Americans Since 1945, edited by Michael S. Harper and Anthony Walton. Join a star-studded lineup of poets and writers reading from the anthology, as well as from their current work. 
 
The reading will be live-streamed via Zoom Webinar.
Registration Required: 
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Ipwst5-mSOSoRXcmpcSJzw

Elizabeth Alexander – poet, educator, memoirist, scholar, and cultural advocate – is president of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She has held distinguished professorships at Smith College, Columbia University, and Yale University, is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, and serves on the Pulitzer Prize Board. Alexander composed and delivered “Praise Song for the Day” for the inauguration of President Barack Obama in 2009, and is author or co-author of fourteen books, including American Sublime (Pulitzer finalist, Poetry, 2006), and The Light of the World(Pulitzer finalist, Biography, 2015).

Cornelius Eady’s seven poetry collections include: Victims of the Latest Dance Craze, winner of the 1985 Lamont Prize; The Gathering of My Name, nominated for a 1992 Pulitzer Prize; and Hardheaded Weather (Putnam, 2008). He is co-founder of the Cave Canem Foundation and a professor of English at SUNY Stony Brook Southampton.

Richard Hamilton’s first full-length collection of poems published by ReCenter Press due out this Spring 2021 examines the ways race, class, and gender inform daily life. Black, queer, and gender non-conforming, Richard is interested in intersections and shared struggle among a motley crew grappling with precarity and survival. A Cave Canem alumni, Richard‘s work has appeared in The Ringing Ear: Lean South, Cave Canem Anthologies, CONSEQUENCE Magazine, Steel Toe Review, and The Drunken Boat. He has received writer fellowships from Surel’s Place, the Vermont Studio and Chautauqua Literary Arts Festival. He holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Alabama and MA in Arts and Public Policy from New York University. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Rachel M. Harper is the author of three novels: The Other Mother, upcoming from Counterpoint Press; This Side of Providence, which was shortlisted for the 2016 Ernest J. Gaines Award; and Brass Ankle Blues, a Borders’ Original Voices Award finalist and Target Breakout Book. Her short fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including, Chicago Review, African American Review,and Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness. She has received fellowships from Yaddo and MacDowell, and is on the faculty at Spalding University's School of Writing. She lives in Los Angeles.

aja monet is a surrealist blues poet, storyteller, and organizer born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. She won the legendary Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam poetry award title in 2007 and follows in the long legacy and tradition of poets participating and assembling in social movements. Her first collection of poems is My Mother Was a Freedom Fighteron Haymarket Books, exploring gender, race, migration, and spirituality. In 2018, she was nominated for a NAACP Literary Award for Poetry and in 2019 was awarded the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Award for Poetry for her cultural organizing work in South Florida. aja monet facilitates “Voices: Poetry for the People,” a workshop and collective in collaboration with Community Justice Project and Dream Defenders. She is currently working on her next full collection of poems entitled, Florida Water.

Philip Schultz, the founder and director of the Writers Studio, which is entering its thirty-third year, has written several poetry collections, the latest being, Luxury, in 2018. His collection, Failure, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2008. 

Anthony Walton is the author of Mississippi: An American Journey, and editor, with Michael Harper, of Every Shut-Eye Ain’t Asleep and The Vintage Book of African American Poetry. He is also the author, with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, of Brothers-In-Arms: The Epic Story of the 761st Tank Battalion, WWII's Forgotten Heroes.  His work has appeared in dozens of magazines and journals, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Black Scholar, Kenyon Review, Poetry Ireland, Ecotone, TLS, PN Review, Harper’s, and
Atlantic Monthly. He has appeared on CNN and wrote and presented documentary radio for the BBC. He is the recipient of a Whiting Award, among other prizes,  and has taught at Bowdoin College since 1995.