Join Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon + Open Mic online Sat, September 25, 2021 2-5pm EDT/ 11am-2pmPDT! Our fabulous featured poets are Crystal WILKINSON, Remica BINGHAM-RISHER, B. Fulton JENNES & Crystal C. MERCER! Your fave co-hosts CYNTHIA MANICK & JP HOWARD return!
#MUST #RSVP USING TICKET EVENTBRITE LINK: https://bit.ly/2YoNWQG
This event is sponsored in part by a 2021 grant from Brooklyn Arts Council. This event is also possible due to the 2021 Phife Diggy Dawg Poetry Award by Salon member, poet, author and educator CHERYL BOYCE-TAYLOR, as part of the Taylor family's support of writers and the NYC Poetry Community. JP Howard and Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon are honored and grateful to be the very first recipient of this award!
Sit down with your favorite meal/snack and beverage on Saturday, September 25, 2021 from 2-5pm EST / 11am-2pm PST on ZOOM for our potluck Salon.
Salon Curator JP HOWARD & Salon poet, CYNTHIA MANICK, will co-host this Salon + Multi-genre Open Mic. Our community and our writers are resilient and during these challenging times we come together in creative ways to celebrate that we are here, our voices are powerful and also to confirm that poetry shared is poetry that heals. JP Howard will begin by sharing a few writing prompts that you can use later and then we will meet briefly in small zoom break-out rooms to check in with each other. Our talented featured writers will each share their powerful work. We will end with an open mic and will try to accommodate as many writers as we can.
You will receive a link to sign up for an open mic slot ONLY after you register on Eventbrite using this link: https://bit.ly/2YoNWQG. Each Open Mic writer can ONLY share one poem or other genre piece, no longer that 2 to 3 minutes MAX. Singers are also welcome too! Sign up here to receive invites to future Salons: http://eepurl.com/lNK0b
BIOS of OUR FEATURED POETS
Crystal Wilkinson is the Poet Laureate of Kentucky. She is the author of Perfect Black, The Birds of Opulence, winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award; Blackberries, Blackberries, winner of the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Literature; and Water Street, a finalist for both the UK's Orange Prize for Fiction and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. The winner of a 2020 USA Artist Fellowship, she serves as associate professor of English at the University of Kentucky. In Perfect Black, the acclaimed writer muses on such topics as motherhood, the politics of her Black body, lost fathers, mental illness, sexual abuse, and religion. It is a captivating conversation about life, love, loss, and pain, interwoven with striking illustrations by her long-time partner, Ronald W. Davis.
Remica Bingham-Risher, a native of Phoenix, Arizona, is a Cave Canem fellow and Affrilachian Poet. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Writer’s Chronicle, Callaloo and Essence. She is the author of Conversion (Lotus, 2006) winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award, What We Ask of Flesh (Etruscan, 2013) shortlisted for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and Starlight & Error (Diode, 2017) winner of the Diode Editions Book Award and finalist for the Library of Virginia Book Award. In August 2022, her book Soul Culture: Black Poets, Books and Questions That Grew Me Up will be published by Beacon Press. She is the Director of Quality Enhancement Plan Initiatives at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA, where she resides with her husband and children.
Crytal C. Mercer, Black, Queer, Create(her), businesswoman and conduit for culture and community, Crystal C. Mercer is a celebrated fiber artist, activist, published author, playwright, and poet. She utilizes theatre, poetry, and textiles to communicate ancestral messages and tell social justice narratives through merchandising artifacts of the culture and storytelling with an emphasis of uplifting voices of color and making marginalized populations visible. Mercer holds a BA in Theatre Arts and Dance from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and a Master’s Degree from the Clinton School of Public Service. Her last name, Mercer, means “a merchant in textiles”. Find out more about her work at www.crystalcmercer.com and follow her on social media @ccmercertoo. She knows, shows, and cares about what’s going on in the hood… In every thread of her being, she is weaving a tapestry of her ancestors, draped in Afro-futurism.
B. Fulton Jennes is the Poet Laureate of Ridgefield, CT, where she leads intergenerational poetry workshops and serves as poet-in-residence at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Her poems have or will soon appear in the Connecticut Literary Anthology (2021 and 2020 editions), Comstock Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Night Heron Barks, Connecticut River Review, Tar River Poetry, Stone Canoe, Vassar Review, Naugatuck River Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, Ekphrastic Review, and many other journals and anthologies. In 2021, her poem “From the Room of an Unknown Girl” was awarded the Leslie McGrath Prize by Helix Magazine. Blinded Birds, a chapbook, will be published in spring of 2022 by Finishing Line Press.
ABOUT YOUR CO-HOSTS CYNTHIA MANICK & JP HOWARD
CYNTHIA MANICK is the author of No Sweet Without Brine (Amistad-HarperCollins, forthcoming 2023), Blue Hallelujahs (Black Lawrence Press, 2016) and editor of The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry (Blair Publishing, 2021) and Soul Sister Revue: A Poetry Compilation (Jamii Publishing, 2019). She has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, MacDowell Colony, and Château de la Napoule among others. Winner of the Lascaux Prize in Collected Poetry, Manick is Founder of the reading series Soul Sister Revue; and her poem "Things I Carry Into the World" was made into a film by Motionpoems, an organization dedicated to video poetry, and has debuted on Tidal for National Poetry Month. A storyteller and performer at literary festivals, libraries, universities, and most recently the Brooklyn and Frye museums, Manick’s work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day Series, Callaloo, Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB), The Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. She currently serves on the board of the International Women’s Writing Guild and the editorial board of Alice James Books. http://www.cynthiamanick.com
JP HOWARD is an author, educator, literary activist, curator and community builder. Her debut poetry collection, SAY/MIRROR (The Operating System), was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. She is also the author of bury your love poems here (Belladonna*) and co-edited Sinister Wisdom Journal Black Lesbians--We Are the Revolution! JP was a featured author in Lambda Literary’s LGBTQ Writers in Schools program and a Split This Rock Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism finalist. She is featured in the Lesbian Poet Trading Card Series from Headmistress Press. JP has received fellowships and grants from Cave Canem, VONA, Lambda, and the Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC). JP’s poetry is widely anthologized. JP is one of three current general Poetry Editors for Women’s Studies Quarterly (WSQ) and Editor-At-Large of Mom Egg Review VOX online. She curates Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon, a NY based forum offering writers a monthly venue to collaborate. http://www.jp-howard.com
