Mic Check! Are you a writer? Come share your work at our next edition of our open mic, Mouth to Mouth. Hosted by AAWW Fam poets Sonia Guiñansaca and Kay Ulanday Barrett, this edition of Mouth to Mouth features Giselle Buchanan and Ysabel Y. Gonzalez. Mouth to Mouth seeks to provide a safe community space for QTPOC and rising migrant artists.
RESERVE A SEAT!
$5 SUGGESTED DONATION | OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | DOORS OPEN AT 6:00
Giselle Buchanan is a poet, multidisciplinary artist and writer from the Bronx, NY. Despite the use of many mediums, her work is united under the umbrella of healing. She believes beauty is restorative and that art can act as a therapeutic agent. As an artist deeply involved in her community, she has worked extensively with women, incarcerated men on Rikers Island and children in East Harlem, the Bronx, and Brooklyn. Additionally, she has worked for various organizations, including the Bronx Museum, Harlem Textile Works and New York Writers Coalition, facilitating workshops and assisting in programs designed to empower the creative and intellectual spirits of students from often underserved communities. She has performed in many places, from bookstores to ballrooms, like Hammerstein Ballroom, the Apollo Theater, the Chicago Theater, Housing Works Bookstore, Bluestockings, and more. She has published writings in the literary magazine Hanging Loose and her poems have been featured on media outlets like MSG network and Nickelodeon. She currently resides in Brooklyn, NY. www.gisellebuchanan.com
New Jersey native Ysabel Y. Gonzalez, is also known for her performance poetry under the alias Ancestral Poetisa. She received her BA from Rutgers University and an MFA in Poetry from Drew University. Ysabel has received invitations to attend VONA, Tin House, Ashbery Home School and BOAAT Press workshops. She’s a CantoMundo Fellow, and has been published in the Paterson Literary Review; Tinderbox Journal; Anomaly; Vinyl; It was Written: Poetry Inspired by Hip-Hop; Wide Shore, Waxwing Literary Journal, and others. You can read more about her work, at www.ysabelgonzalez.com.
Sonia Guiñansaca is a Queer Migrant Feminist Poet , Cultural Organizer, and Activist from Harlem by way of Ecuador. In 2007, Guiñansaca came out publicly as an undocumented immigrant. Since then she has co-founded and help build some of the largest undocumented organizations in the country, coordinating and participating in groundbreaking civil disobedience actions in the immigrant rights movement. She is a VONA/Voices alumni who has performed at El Museo Del Barrio, The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, NY Poetry Festival, Galleria de La Raza, and featured on NBC, PBS, Latina Magazine, Pen American, and the Poetry Foundation to name a few. Praised as badass in 1 of 10 Up and Coming Latinx Poets You Need to Know by Remezcla, as well as one of 13 Coolest Queers on the Internet by Teen Vogue. Guiñansaca was recently announced as the 2017 Artist in Residency at NYU’s Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics.
Kay Ulanday Barrett is a poet, performer, and educator, navigating life as a disabled pilipinx amerikan transgender queer in the U.S. with struggle, resistance, and laughter. When The Chant Comes (Topside Heliotrope 2016) is their first collection. K. has been invited to The White House, Princeton University, UC Berkeley, The Lincoln Center, Queens Museum, and The Chicago Historical Society to name a few. They are a fellow of both The Home School and Drunken Boat. Their contributions are found in PBS News Hour, Lambda Literary, RaceForward, Foglifter, The Deaf Poets Society, Poor Magazine, Fusion.net, Trans Bodies/Trans Selves, Winter Tangerine, Make/Shift, Third Woman Press, The Advocate, and Bitch Magazine. You can read their interview with PBS on poetry as a testimony to survival.
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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