Join O, Miami for a book release reading for Wale Ayinla, Winner of the 6th Annual Toi Derricotte & Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize, awarded by Cave Canem, featuring Mahogany L. Browne and Layla Benitez-James. Free with registration.
Wale Ayinla (he/him) is a Nigerian poet, essayist, and editor. His works recently appeared or are forthcoming on Guernica, South Dakota Review, TriQuarterly, Rhino Poetry, UpTheStaircase Quarterly, The LitQuarterly, Cimarron Review, Ruminate Magazine, McNeese Review, Poet Lore, and elsewhere. He is a staff reader for Adroit Journal. He has a Pushcart prize nomination and several Best of the Net and Best New Poets Award nominations. In 2020, he was a finalist for numerous prizes which include the Jack Grapes Poetry Prize, and his manuscript, Sea Blues on Water Meridian was a finalist for the inaugural Center for African American Poetry and Poetics (CAAPP) Book Prize.
Mahogany L. Browne (she/her) is a writer, organizer & educator. Executive Director of Bowery Poetry Club & Artistic Director of Urban Word NYC & Poetry Coordinator at St. Francis College. Browne has received fellowships from Agnes Gund, Air Serenbe, Cave Canem, Poets House, Mellon Research & Rauschenberg. She is the author of Woke: A Young Poets Call to Justice, Woke Baby & Black Girl Magic (Macmillan), Kissing Caskets (Yes Yes Books) & Dear Twitter (Penmanship Books). She is also the founder of the Woke Baby Book Fair (a nationwide diversity literature campaign) & as an Arts for Justice grantee, is completing her first book of essays on mass incarceration, investigating its impact on women and children. She lives in Brooklyn, NY
Layla Benitez-James (she/her) is an editor and translator based in Alicante whose poems are forthcoming in Virginia Quarterly Review, Bennington Review, and the Latino Book Review. Poems and translations have appeared in Poetry London, The London Magazine, Hinchas de Poesia, The Acentos Review, Guernica, Waxwing, Revista Kokoro, La Galla Ciencia, and elsewhere. Audio essays about translation can be found at Asymptote Journal Podcast and print essays have been published in Tenderly Mag and Europe Now Journal. God Suspected My Heart Was a Geode but He Had to Make Sure was selected by Major Jackson for the 2017 Cave Canem Toi Derricotte & Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize and published by Jai-Alai Books in Miami.