What is the noise of people outside of the state? Come hear three writers share their poetry of clandestine resistance and insurgency across borderlands, from post-Katrina New Orleans and Flint, Michigan to Palestine, and the Mediterranean. We’re excited to host a visit from the out-of-town poet and 2019 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize Winner Zaina Alsous, who will share her work on freedom dreams and Palestine. Poet Jasmine Gibson will read from Don’t Let Them See Me Like This, her sensuous debut poetry collection that traces where capitalism becomes ingestion, intimacy becomes militant uprising, and the Black Radical Tradition spells the end of all border regimes. Writer and teacher Asiya Wadud will read from Crosslight for Youngbird, her lyrical collection of poems about forced exodus in the Mediterranean, flight, and present-day migration crises.

RESERVE A SEAT!
$5 SUGGESTED DONATION | OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Zaina Alsous is a daughter of the Palestinian diaspora, born and raised in North Carolina. She currently lives in Miami, Florida while pursuing an MFA in poetry, and teaches undergraduate writing as a Michener Fellow at The University of Miami. Her work has appeared in The Offing, the Boston Review, Bitch Magazine, the New Inquiry, Mask Magazine, Best New Poets 2017 and elsewhere. Her chapbook Lemon Effigies won the 2017 Rick Campbell Chapbook Prize, and was published on Anhinga Press. Her first full-length collection A Theory of Birds won the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize, and will be published by the University of Arkansas Press in fall of 2019. Check out her essay about the art of the Palestinian diaspora, and the homecoming of abolition, in The Margins.

Jasmine Gibson is a Philly jawn based in Brooklyn. She spends her time thinking about sexy things like psychosis, desire, and freedom. She is the author of the chapbook Drapetomania (Commune Editions, 2015) and the co-author, with Madison Van Oort, of Time Theft: A Love Story (The Elephants, 2018). Don’t Let Them See Me Like This is her debut poetry collection from Nightboat Books. Check out her conversation about the book with Zaina Alsous, “Theory Meets Body,” in Adroit Journal.

Asiya Wadud writes about borders, limits, archipelagos and islands. She teaches poetry at Saint Ann’s School in the daytime and English to new immigrants and refugees on Wednesday evenings. Her first book, Crosslight for Youngbird, was published by Nightboat Books in October 2018 and her book, Syncope, is forthcoming from Ugly Duckling Presse in 2019. No Knowledge Is Complete Until It Passes Through My Body will be out from Nightboat in 2020. Her work has been supported by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Dickinson House, Mount Tremper Arts, and the New York Public Library, among others. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she loves animals.

This event will be livestreamed on the Asian American Writers’ Facebook page.

Image credit: Maximo Colon. Untitled, c. 1970.

NOTE ON ACCESSIBILITY
*The space is wheelchair accessible. No stairs. Direct elevator from ground floor to 6th floor.
*We strongly encourage all participants of the space/event to be scent-free.
If you all have any other specific questions about accessibility, please email Tiffany Le at tle@aaww.org with any questions on reserving priority seating.

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