Details and Description

April 8, 2023

4:00pm PT

1540 Lincoln Avenue

Pasadena, CA 91103

Official Description:

Funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, Voices at the Center of American Literature will feature readings and conversations by and with BIPOC and LGBTQ+ authors to discuss visibility, community, and navigating multiple identities, plus the “own voice” and personal narrative. Award-winning poets Afaa M. Weaver and Douglas Manuel will speak on these topics in a conversation moderated by Los Angeles Poet Laureate Lynne Thompson, joined by jazz musician Dr. Ray Briggs of the Pasadena Conservatory of Music. This event will also be paired with a brand new photography exhibition, featuring photographs by Alfred Haymond of the 2020 George Floyd/#BlackLivesMatter protests around Pasadena.

Please join us for what will undoubtedly be a powerfully moving experience.

ASL interpreting services will be provided. This event will take place in-person at the Hen House Literary Center in Pasadena, California, and will also be livestreamed on Red Hen Press’s website at redhen.org/virtual, Red Hen’s YouTube Channel, and Red Hen’s Facebook Page.

This event is free, but all events taking place at the Hen House Literary Center require proof of vaccination prior to entry. Please have your vaccination cards and IDs at the ready!

Afaa Michael Weaver (尉雅風)—previously known as Michael S. Weaver—is a native of Baltimore, Maryland, where he graduated Polytechnic High School at the age of sixteen. After two years at the University of Maryland in College Park, he left to spend fifteen years working in Baltimore factories, during which time he wrote and published poetry, journalism, and short fiction, as well as founded 7th Son Press. He received the Kingsley Tufts Award, the Phillis Wheatley Book Award, four Pushcart Prizes, and been published in two volumes of Best American Poetry. His other awards include the Mae Sarton Award, a Pew Fellowship in poetry (1998), a Fulbright appointment (2002) to teach in Taiwan, the Gold Friendship Medal (2005) from the Beijing Writers Association, and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2017) in poetry. He lives in the Hudson Valley area of New York with Kristen Skedgell, his wife. www.magichorses.org

Douglas Manuel was born in Anderson, Indiana and now resides in Long Beach, California. He received a BA in Creative Writing from Arizona State University, an MFA in poetry from Butler University, and a PhD in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. His first collection of poems, Testify, won an IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award for poetry, and his poems and essays can be found in numerous literary journals, magazines, and websites, most recently Zyzzyva, Pleiades, and the New Orleans Review. He has traveled to Egypt and Eritrea with The University of Iowa’s International Writing Program to teach poetry. A recipient of the Dana Gioia Poetry Award and a fellowship from the Borchard Foundation Center on Literary Arts, he is a Bayard Rustin Fellow at Whittier College and teaches at Spalding University’s low-res MFA program.