Join us to celebrate the 3 year anniversary of the release of poetry book, When The Chant Comes by Kay Ulanday Barrett. Consider this a night of bravado and poignant poems that invite a plethora of Queer and BIPOC ingenuity to the stage. A ruckus of evening you don’t want to miss!

RSVP HERE! $5 Suggested Donation
No one will be turned away for lack of funds. All donations go to AAWW public programs. The Asian American Workshop is a national nonprofit dedicated to the belief that Asian American stories deserve to be told.

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. Their book When The Chant Comes was published Fall 2016 by Topside Press received critical acclaim from performance spaces to literary poetry festivals to your cousin’s potluck. Since publications, their book has featured in over 35+ cities and 15 conferences/festivals nationwide and to note, still daydreams of the days of livejournal, and now apparently Tumblr. With insight, tenderness, and astute relevance, Barrett has been bringing their unique poetry to audiences for over a decade, unpicking vital political questions around race, sickness and disability and gender, death and grief, and chronicling the everydayness of life in the U.S. Empire with humor, poignancy and inimitable vitality. Each of these poems is a brilliant little story. Taken together, they show a master craftsman at the top of their game.

PRAISE FOR WHEN THE CHANT COMES

“When The Chant Comes is fire medicine for the Soul: it calls forth a re-calibration of these rageful times that we are living in. Get this book. Get your healing y’alll.”
— Sharon Bridgforth, Lambda Literary Award winner & author of Bull Jean stories

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“When the chant comes, we arise, relieved that we aren’t alone. When the chant comes, we join in full-throated. When The Chant Comes is pure, queer love that refuses to apologize.”
— Vivek Shreya, author of I’m Afriad of Men, The Subtweet, and She of the Mountains

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“These poems are songs–aching, beautiful, necessary songs that transport and transform.”
— Eli Clare, author of Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure and Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation

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KAY ULANDAY BARRETT is a poet, performer, and cultural strategist. K. has featured at The Lincoln Center, Symphony Space, Princeton University, Tucson Poetry Festival, NY Poetry Festival, The Dodge Poetry Foundation, The Hemispheric Institute, & Brooklyn Museum. They are a 2x Pushcart Prize nominee and received fellowships/residencies from Lambda Literary Review, VONA/Voices, The Home School, and Macondo. They are Guest Editor for Nat.Brut & Guest Faculty for The Poetry Foundation. Their contributions include: Academy of American Poets, The New York Times, Asian American Literary Review, PBS News Hour, F(r)iction, VIDA Review, NYLON, The Huffington Post, Them., Bitch Magazine, Apogee, & more. Their first book, When The Chant Comes was published by Topside Press in 2016. Their second collection More Than Organs, will be published by Sibling Rivalry Press, Spring 2020. See their work at Kaybarrett.net or on social media, @brownroundboi .

MONCHO ALVARADO is a Mexican-American queer poet, translator, and educator. Their poems have been published in 2018 Emerge Lambda Fellows Anthology, The Academy of American Poets website, Mikrokosmos Journal, and other publications. They are a recipient of fellowships and residencies from The Helen Wurlitzer Foundation, Lambda Literary, Poets House, Troika House, and won the Academy of American Poet’s John B. Santoianni award for excellence in poetry. Born and raised in Pacoima, California, they currently live in Brooklyn, New York.

JOSHUNDA SANDERS is the author of five books, including her first children’s book in a series, I Can Write the World, published by Six Foot Press in July 2019. When she’s not tweeting randomly, she is at work on her sixth book, a novel, and lives in her hometown, The Bronx.

JASMINE REID Jasmine Reid is a twice trans poet of flowers. She is the author of the forthcoming chapbook Deus Ex Nigrum, winner of the 2018 Honeysuckle Press Chapbook Contest, selected by Danez Smith. An MFA candidate at Cornell University and recipient of fellowships from Poets House and Jack Jones Literary Arts, her work has been published or is forthcoming in Muzzle Magazine, Apogee, the Shade Journal, and Paper Darts, among others. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominated poet, Jasmine was born and raised in Baltimore, MD, and is currently based in Ithaca, NY.Find her at reidjasmine.com

Pamela Sneed is a New York-based poet, writer, performer and emerging visual artist. She is author of Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom than Slavery, KONG and Other Works and a chaplet, “Gift” by Belladonna. She has been featured in the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Time Out, BOMB, VIBE, and on the cover of New York Magazine. She has appeared in Art Forum, The Huffington Post and Hyperallergic. In 2017, she was a Visiting Critic at Yale and Columbia University. She is a Visiting Professor at Columbia University’s School of the Arts and online faculty at Chicago’s School of the Art Institute teaching Human Rights and Writing Art and has also been a Visiting Artist at SAIC. Her performances include: Whitney Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Poetry Project, NYU and Pratt Universities, The High Line, Performa, Danspace, The Bessies, Performance Space, Joe’s Pub, The Public Theater. Her short story book Sweet Dreams was published by Belladonna in April 2018.

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.