Hear two exceptional poets read from and discuss their work in this intimate meeting-of-the-minds, co-presented with Kundiman. Lillian-Yvonne Bertram is the author of But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise (Red Hen Press, 2012), chosen by Claudia Rankine as the winner of the 2010 Benjamin Saltman Award. Jennifer Chang's Some Say the Lark (Alice James Books, 2017) won the 2018 William Carlos Williams Award, and was long-listed for the PEN Open Book Award. Cave Canem fellow Camonghne Felix moderates. Free and open to the public. Refreshments served. Co-sponsored by the New School Creative Writing Program.
Lillian-Yvonne Bertram is an Assistant Professor in the Creative Writing Program MFA at UMass Boston. She is a Cave Canem fellow and author of Personal Science (Tupelo Press, 2017); a slice from the cake made of air (Red Hen Press 2016); and But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise (Red Hen Press, 2012), chosen by Claudia Rankine as the winner of the 2010 Benjamin Saltman Award. Bertram’s other publications include the chapbook cutthroat glamours (Phantom Books, 2012), winner of the Phantom Books chapbook award; the artist book Grand Dessein (commissioned by Container Press), a mixed media artifact on the work of artist Paul Klee and was recently acquired by the Special Collections library at St. Lawrence University; and Tierra Fisurada (Editoriales del Duende, 2002), a Spanish poetry chapbook published in Argentina. She interviewed the artist Laylah Ali for the exhibition booklet of Ali's 2017 art show The Acephalous Series. Bertram has published poetry, prose, and essays in numerous journals. Her honors include a 2017 Harvard University Woodberry Poetry Room Creative Grant, a 2014 National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship, finalist nomination for the 2013 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and others.
Jennifer Chang is the author of The History of Anonymity (University of Georgia Press, 2008) and Some Say the Lark (Alice James Books, 2017), which was long-listed for the PEN Open Book Award and won the 2018 William Carlos Williams Award. Her poems have appeared in numerous publications, including American Poetry Review, The Nation, The New Yorker, Poetry, and A Public Space. Chang also has poems and essays forthcoming in New England Review, New Literary History, The New York Times, and Oxford Encyclopedia of Asian Pacific American Literature and Culture. She co-chairs the advisory board of Kundiman, an organization that supports Asian American writers, and teaches creative writing and literature at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
Camonghne Felix, M.A. has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Callaloo, Poets House and is an alumnus of the NYU Arts Politics M.A. program and the Bard MFA program. The 2012 Pushcart Prize nominee is the author of the chapbook Yolk (Penmanship Books, 2015), was recently listed by Black Youth Project as a "Black Girl from the Future You Should Know," and has been published in various publications, including Poetry, Academy of American Poets, Buzzfeed Reader, Teen Vogue, PEN America, The Brooklyn Rail, The Offing, and The Shallow Ends. A political strategist during the day, Camonghne represents high profile individuals, nonprofits, and advocacy organizations in all media and government interactions, helping clients influence the local and national issues that matter most to their communities. Her debut collection of poems, Build Yourself a Boat, was a 2017 University of Wisconsin Press Brittingham & Pollak Prize finalist, a 2017 Fordham University Poets Out Loud semi-finalist, and is forthcoming from Haymarket Books in 2019.