Join Obsidian: Literature & Arts for "See What I'm Saying Is: A Live Reading with Chaun Webster and LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs," the second event in their #ObsidianVoices series celebrating artistic excellence in the African Diaspora. The Zoom reading will be moderated by Douglas Kearney.
Chaun Webster is a poet and graphic designer whose work is an ongoing study of the instability of blackness and black subjectivities, geography, memory, and the body. Webster’s debut book, Gentry!fication: or the scene of the crime, was published by Noemi Press in 2018 and received the Minnesota Book Award for poetry.
LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs is a writer, vocalist and performance/sound artist, and the author of TwERK (Belladonna, 2013). Diggs has presented and performed at California Institute of the Arts, El Museo del Barrio, The Museum of Modern Art, and Walker Art Center. As an independent curator, artistic director, and producer, Diggs has presented events for BAMCafé, Black Rock Coalition, El Museo del Barrio, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, and the David Rubenstein Atrium. Diggs has received a 2020 C.D. Wright Award for Poetry from the Foundation of Contemporary Art, a Whiting Award (2016), and a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship (2015), as well as grants and fellowships from Cave Canem, Creative Capital, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the US-Japan Friendship Commission, among others. She lives in Harlem.
Douglas Kearney is a poet, performer, librettist, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Cy Twombly awardee, and a Cave Canem fellow. He’s published six books and teaches creative writing at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities. Most recently, he published Buck Studies (Fence Books, 2016), winner of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Award, the CLMP Firecracker Award for Poetry, and silver medalist for the California Book Award (Poetry). BOMB says: “[Buck Studies] remaps the 20th century in a project that is both lyrical and epic, personal and historical.” A Howard University and CalArts alum, Kearney teaches Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities. Born in Brooklyn, raised in Altadena, CA, he lives with his family in St. Paul.