Mic Check! Are you a writer? Come share your work at our next edition of our open mic, Mouth to Mouth. Curated and hosted by the magical Kay Ulanday Barrett and Jaden Fields! This month we’re featuring Muriel Leung and féi hernandez.
Mouth to Mouth seeks to provide a safe community space for queer and trans BIPOC folx and and rising migrant artists. We seek to uplift these voices and ask all allies to step back & show your support by attending & cheering our performers on.
**We will call for open mic performers a week before the event.
// NOTE ON ACCESSIBILITY//
This event will be captioned with ASL Interpretation by Pro Bono ASL.
Kay Ulanday Barrett (@brownroundboi) is a poet, performer, and cultural strategist; their collection More Than Organs received a 2021 Stonewall Book Honor Award by the American Library Association and is a 2021 Lambda Literary Award Finalist. Barrett has been featured at Lincoln Center, the United Nations, Symphony Space, the Poetry Foundation, Princeton University, the Hemispheric Institute, and the Brooklyn Museum. They’ve received fellowships from MacDowell, Lambda Literary Review, Macondo, and VONA. Their contributions are found in The New York Times, Asian American Literary Review, them., NYLON, Vogue, Buzzfeed, The Advocate, Frontier Poetry, The Rumpus, RaceForward, and more. Currently, they remix their mama’s recipes in Jersey City with their jowly dog. www.kaybarrett.net.
Jaden Fields is an LA-based poet, cultural worker, and educator whose work centers the healing possibilities of marginalized communities. For the past few years, he has advocated in solidarity with queer, trans, and intersex communities. Jaden has facilitated healing-centered writing workshops for queer and trans writers. He has performed all over Los Angeles, including LA Pride, Long Beach Pride, Venice Pride, and DTLA Proudfest. Jaden self-published his first chapbook, Intentional Musings on Staying Alive When I Want To Die (2019), an honest depiction of navigating mental health and systemic oppression, and leaning into his own healing.
Muriel Leung is the author of Imagine Us, The Swarm (Nightboat Books), Bone Confetti (Noemi Press), and Images Seen to Images Felt (Antenna) in collaboration with artist Kristine Thompson. A Pushcart Prize nominated writer, her writing can be found in The Baffler, Cream City Review, Gulf Coast, The Collagist, Fairy Tale Review, and others. She is a recipient of fellowships to Kundiman, VONA/Voices Workshop and the Community of Writers. She is the Poetry Co-Editor of Apogee Journal. Currently, she is an Andrew W. Mellon Humanities in a Digital World fellow at the University of Southern California where she is completing her PhD in Creative Writing and Literature. She is from Queens, NY.
féi hernandez (b.1993 Chihuahua, Mexico) is a trans, Inglewood- raised, formerly undocumented immigrant artist, writer, healer. They have been published in POETRY, Pank Magazine, Oxford Review of Books, Frontier Poetry, The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext, amongst others. They are a Define American Fellow for 2021 and are currently the Board President of Gender Justice Los Angeles. féi is the author of the full-length poetry collection Hood Criatura (Sundress Publications 2020) which was on NPR’s Best Books of 2020. féi collects Pokémon plushies.
