Join New Dominion Bookshop for a reading with poets Lauren K. Alleyne and Leona Sevick. Lauren K. Alleyne will be reading from her recent work, and Leona Sevick will be reading from her new collection, The Bamboo Wife. This in-person event will be free and open to the public. We recommend arriving early for the best seating.
Lauren K. Alleyne serves as executive director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center and a professor of English. She is the author of two collections, Honeyfish (2019) and Difficult Fruit (2014), and two chapbooks, Dawn in the Kaatskills and (Un)Becoming Gretel, as well as the coeditor of Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry. Alleyne, who hails from the twin island Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, has been recognized with a US Artist Award nomination, an NAACP Image Award nomination for Outstanding Poetry, and the Green Rose Prize from New Issues. In 2022, Alleyne was awarded the JMU Agency Star Award and an Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia.
Leona Sevick’s recent work appears in Orion, Birmingham Poetry Review, Blackbird, The Southern Review, and The Sun. Leona serves on the advisory board of the Furious Flower Poetry Center and is provost and professor of English at Bridgewater College in Virginia, where she teaches Asian American literature. She is the 2017 Press 53 Poetry Award winner for her first full-length book of poems, Lion Brothers. Her second collection of poems, The Bamboo Wife, is published by Trio House Press.