In 2020, worker-owned, independent publisher Radix Media initiated The Megaphone Prize, then called the Own Voices Prize, as a way to champion, highlight, and publish emerging writers of color. For our first iteration, poet Aria Aber graciously came on as the guest judge and chose There Is Still Singing in the Afterlife by JinJin Xu and BINT by Ghinwa Jawhari as the winning manuscripts.
Publishing There Is Still Singing in the Afterlife in 2020 was transformative for us: we were ushered into the melancholic, cathartic poetic voice of JinJin Xu, we got to publish a stunning chapbook bearing the calligraphy of JinJin’s ancestor — a lovely bridge between the now and the before, much like JinJin’s poems, and we got to witness first-hand the love, fealty, and admiration for this book. What did we miss then? Celebrating the chapbook with JinJin in person, bound to the limitations of the pandemic in its first year: us here and JinJin in Shanghai.
Now, JinJin returns to Brooklyn, albeit for a short visit and we would be remiss to not celebrate this incredible work of poems. What makes this even sweeter is that we are proud to release the third print run of There Is Still Singing in the Afterlife at the event. We will be joined by an exceptional coterie of poets: Jiaoyang Li, Cleo Qian, Yuxi Lin, and our very own Ghinwa Jawhari, with JinJin as the headlining poet of the hour. We have the lovely folks over at the Asian American Writers Workshop (AAWW) coming onboard as co-hosts.
Please join us at Mood Ring, a sprightly AAPI-led space, on September 1 for a night of poetry and community.
About the Artists:
JinJin Xu is a poet, artist, and filmmaker based in Shanghai and New York. She is the 2020 winner of the Poetry Society of America’s George Bogin Memorial Award and her performance/films have exhibited at the Harun Farocki Institute and The Immigrant Artist Biennial. She received her MFA from NYU, where she was a Lillian Vernon Fellow, and traveled for a year as a Thomas J. Watson Fellow recording docu-poems with women dislocated across nine countries. Her debut chapbook There Is Still Singing in the Afterlife was selected by Aria Aber for the inaugural Own Voices Chapbook Prize (Radix Media, 2020). Her second chapbook This Is My Testimony interrogates language, otherness, and belonging in writing workshops (Black Warrior Review, 2022). She is currently guest features director of LIFE Magazine, China.
Ghinwa Jawhari is a Lebanese American writer based in Brooklyn, NY. Her debut chapbook BINT (2021) was selected for Radix Media’s Own Voices Chapbook Prize. A recipient of fellowships from Kundiman and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, she is the founding editor of Koukash Review. Her essays, fiction, and poetry appear in Catapult, Mizna, The Adroit Journal, Rusted Radishes, The Margins, Narrative, and elsewhere. More at ghinwajawhari.com / IG @bbghanouj
Jiaoyang Li is a poet, wedding minister and multimedia artist based in New York. Jiaoyang’s work has been presented at the Today’s Art Museum, Chashama Gallery, Mana Contemporary, Latitude Gallery, New York Live Art Center, Immigrant Artist Biennial, Performa Biennial, Here Art Center, New Ohio Theatre, and streets that only ghosts visit. Jiaoyang has received grants and support from Pen America, British Council, and New York Foundation for the Arts but can still not make a living. Jiaoyang co-founded Accent Society, an online creative writing education platform and Accent Sisters Bookstore and Gallery.
Yuxi Lin is a Chinese American writer, AAWW Margins Fellow, and winner of the Breakout 8 Writers Prize. Her writing has appeared in Poetry, Longreads, The Southern Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Electric Literature, and elsewhere. She has received support from the Millay Colony for the Arts and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. Yuxi received her MFA from New York University, where she was a Lillian Vernon Fellow.
Cleo Qian (she/her) is a queer writer born in California. Her writing has been published in or is forthcoming from over thirty outlets including The Sun, ZYZZYVA, Pleiades, The Massachusetts Review and Shenandoah. Her first book, the short story collection LET’S GO LET’S GO LET’S GO, is out now.
