Come celebrate the recent publications of new work by three brilliant Cave Canem poets. Winner of an American Book Award for Poetry, Jericho Brown is the author of three poetry collections, most recently The Tradition (Copper Canyon 2019), of which Claudia Rankine says, "To read Jericho Brown's poems is to encounter devastating genius." Marwa Helal is the author of Invasive species (Nightboat Books, 2019), praised by Solmaz Sharif for being "gorgeous and gutting, rising to its own invocation." Of Kwoya Fagin Maples's debut collection MEND (University Press of Kentucky, 2018), finalist for the AWP Prize, Abraham Smith notes, "MEND is a startling, stomping debut. Maples’s masterful image-making magnetizes and mesmerizes." Free and open to the public. Refreshments served. This event is co-sponsored with the NYU Creative Writing Program.
Jericho Brown is the author of three poetry collections, most recently The Tradition (2019). His first book, Please (New Issues 2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (Copper Canyon 2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was named one of the best of the year by Library Journal, Coldfront, and the Academy of American Poets. Brown is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His poems have appeared in Buzzfeed, The Nation, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Time, The Pushcart Prize Anthology and several volumes of The Best American Poetry anthologies. Brown is an associate professor and the director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University in Atlanta.
Marwa Helal is a poet and journalist. She is the author of I AM MADE TO LEAVE I AM MADE TO RETURN (No, Dear/Small Anchor Press, 2017) and Invasive species (Nightboat Books, 2019). Helal is the winner of BOMB Magazine’s Biennial 2016 Poetry Contest and has been awarded fellowships from Poets House, Brooklyn Poets, and Cave Canem. Her work appears in Apogee, Hyperallergic, Poets & Writers, Winter Tangerine and elsewhere. Born in Al Mansurah, Egypt, Helal currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Kwoya Fagin Maples is a writer from Charleston, S.C. Her debut poetry collection, MEND, (University Press of Kentucky, 2018) was finalist for the AWP Prize and received a grant from the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alabama and is a graduate Cave Canem fellow. Her work is published in several journals and anthologies including Blackbird Literary Journal, Berkeley Poetry Review, Obsidian, The African-American Review, PLUCK, and Cave Canem Anthology XIII. Maples teaches Creative Writing at the Alabama School of Fine Arts and directs an annual three-dimensional poetry exhibit which features poetry and visual art including original paintings, photography, installations and film.