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 Tova Ricardo and Amanda Torres. 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

Tova Ricardo is a freshman at Columbia University, pursuing English and Sociology. Ricardo was the 2015 Youth Poet Laureate of Oakland, California and is continuing her passion for spoken word as a member of the 2017-2018 Barnard/Columbia Poetry Slam Team. Ricardo’s poetry tackles subjects of gentrification, black liberation, the fluidity and structure of home, and honoring ancestors. She believes that the written and spoken word can be outlets for self-expression, and catalysts for social change and legislative reform.

Amanda Torres is a loud laughing queer, Latinx writer, singer, teacher, and organizer who loves avocados. Originally from Chicago, Amanda has been teaching and performing spoken word locally and internationally for over twelve years in schools, juvenile detention centers, libraries, community centers and museums. She is co­-founder of L@s Eloter@s, a socially engaged Latinx writing teachers collective. In addition to her teaching and performing, Amanda has led social change through youth spoken word trainings across the US. She served as the poetry artist in residence at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston for three years. In 2010, Amanda co-­founded MassLEAP, a youth poetry and social justice organization that runs Louder Than A Bomb Massachusetts. She currently serves as Artistic Director. She also works as a teaching fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

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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