Mouth to Mouth is back for 2024 with a showcase and open mic featuring the incomparable George Abraham & Zara Jamshed on Wednesday, January 24 at 7 PM ET! Curated and hosted by Kay Ulanday Barrett.

Limited open mic slots are available! To put your name in for lottery selection, SIGN UP HERE by January 21. 

RSVP HERE to receive a link the day of the event!

Mouth to Mouth provides a safer community space for queer and trans folx of the global majority and rising migrant artists. We seek to uplift these voices and ask all allies to step back & show your support by cheering our performers on.

KAY ULANDAY BARRETT is a poet, essayist, cultural strategist, and A+ napper. They are the winner of the 2022 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Cy Twombly Award for Poetry, a winner of the 2022 Next Book Residency with Tin House, and a recipient of a 2020 James Baldwin Fellowship at MacDowell. Their second book, More Than Organs (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020) received a 2021 Stonewall Honor Book Award by the American Library Association and is a 2021 Lambda Literary Award Finalist. They have been featured at The United Nations, The Lincoln Center, The Hemispheric Institute, Symphony Space, The Ford Foundation, Brooklyn Museum, Princeton, Yale, Manchester PRIDE, Sesame Street, & more. Their contributions are found in The New York Times, Poetry Magazine, Colorlines, Literary Hub, Poetry Unbound, Al Jazeera, NYLON, Vogue, The Rumpus, The Lily, and elsewhere.  Check out @Brownroundboi on social media.

George Abraham (they/هو) is a Palestinian American poet. Their debut poetry collection Birthright (Button Poetry, 2020) won the Arab American Book Award and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. They are currently executive editor for Mizna, and are a recipient of fellowships from Kundiman, The Arab American National Museum, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, National Performance Network, and more. They are currently co-editing a Palestinian global anglophone poetry anthology with Noor Hindi (Haymarket Books, 2024) and are a Litowitz MFA+MA candidate at Northwestern University

Zara Jamshed (they/them) is a queer, trans, disabled Pakistani-American poet and engineer from NYC living in the San Francisco Bay Area. They have had their work supported by Anaphora Arts, Kearny Street Workshop, Open Mouth Literary, Periplus Collective, Queer Ancestors Project, Still Here San Francisco, Sundress Academy for the Arts, THEYFRIEND, and VONA. Their debut full-length poetry collection Neither Created Nor Destroyed was a semi-finalist for the Pamet River Prize, a finalist for the Stories Award for Poetry, and is available now with Game Over Books. Putting their engineering degree to use, they currently work to bring the economic and environmental benefits of solar energy to California’s low-income renters.

Accessibility
This event will be captioned and ASL Interpretation is provided by our friends at Pro Bono ASL.

Event Image Description:Atop green-ish blue watercolor and wavy background is bold white text that reads “MOUTH TO MOUTH SHOWCASE & OPEN MIC WITH GEORGE ABRAHAM AND ZARA JAMSHED, CURATED AND HOSTED BY KAY ULANDAY BARRETT. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24, 7PM ET, ONLINE, CART & ASL PROVIDED”. To the left of the text are two rectangular greyscale portraits: George Abraham, a queer poet of Palestinian heritage. They are wearing a button up shirt printed with small dots. They have a septum piercing and a mustache and beard and have their face and eyes turned slightly to the camera. To the right of George is a portrait of Zara Jamshed, a queer, trans, disabled Pakistani-American poet. They have large black glasses and are looking slightly down at the camera. Their black hair is parted to the side and cascades into their shoulder. They are wearing a white shirt and a chain with a rectangular pendant. To the right of the text is an abstract shaped greyscale portrait of Kay Ulanday Barrett, a Pilipinx queer, trans, disabled poet with a round face, black coifed hair, a button up shirt, and clear acetate glasses. They have a serious facial expression and are looking off into the distance. Across the bottom of the graphic are alternating images of an open mouth and a bold, black, italicized AAWW logo.

RSVP HERE to receive a link the day of the event!