Hear 2016 Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize winner Laura Swearingen-Steadwell read from her second book of poems, All Blue So Late, which Pulitzer Prize winner Tyehimba Jess calls “a haunting coming of age; a slow and writhing eruption of womanhood through layers of heat, siren and loss.” Reginald Flood, honorable mention for I Hear Em Say War Is Still Going On In the World, as well as contest judge and Cave Canem president Jacqueline Jones LaMon, begin the evening with introductory readings. Free and open to the public. Refreshments to follow.
Laura Swearingen-Steadwell is a graduate of Warren Wilson’s MFA Program for Writers, and the author of How to Seduce a White Boy in Ten Easy Steps. She works as an editor and a teaching artist, and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Reginald Flood is a native of south central Los Angeles who now lives in a small town in southeastern Connecticut with his family. He is the author of Coffle (Willow Books 2012) and has a forthcoming collection, Refugeed that will be published by Willow Books in the Fall. He is an associate professor of English and Coordinator of African American Studies at Eastern Connecticut State University, where he teaches African American literature and creative writing. Reginald was awarded a National Endowment of the Arts Literature Fellowship in Poetry and a National Endowment of the Humanities Fellowship.
Jacqueline Jones LaMon is the author of two collections, Last Seen, a Felix Pollak Poetry Prize selection, and Gravity, U.S.A., recipient of the Quercus Review Press Poetry Series Book Award; and the novel, In the Arms of One Who Loves Me. Ms. LaMon’s work has appeared in a wide variety of publications such as Poetry, Prairie Schooner, and Crab Orchard Review. Noted by the NAACP in the category of Outstanding Literary Work, Poetry, Ms. LaMon is the recipient of fellowships from the Yaddo Foundation, the Kimbilio Center for African American Fiction, the Fine Arts Work Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and many others. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College and UCLA School of Law, Ms. LaMon earned her M.F.A. in Creative Writing, Poetry, from Indiana University Bloomington. Ms. LaMon teaches in the multi-genre M.F.A. program at Adelphi University and lives in Brooklyn, New York. She serves as the president of Cave Canem Foundation, Inc.