THE POETRY QUESTION: TPQ20

Join Chris in conversation with performance poet, advocacy journalist, and teaching artist, Donney Rose, about passions, process, pitfalls, and Poetry! DONNEY ROSE - Baton Rouge native Donney Rose is a Maryland-based performance poet, advocacy journalist, and teaching artist. He is the creator of THE AMERICAN AUDIT, a suite of multi-media spoken word projects that examines the Black American experience by infusing history, creative verse, and qualitative research into the performance text. His work, which spans two decades on stages and in classrooms, guides others in their creative journeys and brings nuanced and colorful perspectives through the medium of spoken word and other creative outlets.

Join Chris of The Poetry Question in conversation with Courtney Faye Taylor, author of Concentrate (Graywolf Press) and winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, about passions, process, pitfalls, and Poetry! COURTNEY FAYE TAYLOR is a writer and visual artist. She is the author of Concentrate, forthcoming from Graywolf Press in November 2022. It is the winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize selected by Rachel Eliza Griffiths and was a finalist for the National Poetry Series.

Courtney earned her BA from Agnes Scott College and her MFA from the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers’ Program where she received the Hopwood Prize in Poetry. She is also the winner of the 92Y Discovery Prize and an Academy of American Poets Prize. The recipient of residencies and fellowships from Cave Canem and the Charlotte Street Foundation, Courtney’s work can be found in Poetry Magazine, The Nation, Ploughshares, Best New Poets, The New Republic and elsewhere.

Join Chris of The Poetry Question in a sit down with Luther Hughes, author of Shiver in the Leaves, about passions, process, pitfalls, and Poetry. LUTHER HUGHES is the author of the debut poetry collection, A Shiver in the Leaves, (BOA Editions), and the chapbook Touched (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2018). He is the founder of Shade Literary Arts, a literary organization for queer writers of color, and co-hosts The Poet Salon podcast with Gabrielle Bates and Dujie Tahat. Recipient of the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship and 92Y Discovery Poetry Prize, his work has been published in various journal, magazines, and newspapers. Luther was born and raised in Seattle, where he currently lives.

Join Chris of The Poetry Question in a sit down with Jasminne Mendez, Author of City Without Altar (Noemi Press), about passions, process, pitfalls, & Poetry! Jasminne Mendez is a Dominican-American poet, playwright, translator and award winning author of several books for children and adults. She is the author of two hybrid memoirs, Island of Dreams (Floricanto Press) and Night-Blooming Jasmin(n)e: Personal Essays and Poetry (Arte Público Press). Her second YA memoir, Islands Apart: Becoming Dominican American (Arte Público Press) is forthcoming in May 2022 and her debut poetry collection, City Without Altar, was a finalist for the Noemi Press Book Award for Poetry and will be released in August 2022. Her debut middle grade book Anina del Mar Jumps In (Dial) is a novel in verse about a young girl diagnosed with Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis and is set to release in 2023. Her debut picture book Josefina’s Habichuelas (Arte Público Press), was released last year.

Mendez has had poetry and essays published by or forthcoming in numerous journals and anthologies including The Kenyon Review, New England Review, the YA Latinx Anthology Wild Tongues Can’t be Tamed edited by Saraciea Fennell (Flatiron/Macmillan), and in The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext (Haymarket Books). She has translated and written poetry and a libretto for the Houston Grand Opera and she translated Amanda Gorman’s best-selling Change Sings into the Spanish edition La canción del cambio. The dramatized version of her play in verse City Without Altar received its world premiere at Milagro theatre in Portland, Oregon this spring. She is an MFA graduate of the creative writing program at the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University, a University of Houston alumni, and a Canto Mundo Fellow.

Based in Houston, she is the Co-Founder and Program Director of the Houston based Latinx literary arts organization Tintero Projects and a co-host to the poetry and writing podcast series InkWell a collaboration between Tintero Projects and Inprint Houston. She is a Canto Mundo Fellow, a Kenyon Review Writer’s Workshop Peter Taylor Fellow and a Macondo and VONA alumni.

When she’s not writing or napping in her hammock she enjoys playing with sand on the beach with her daughter, swimming in the ocean or a pool, practicing yoga, baking cupcakes and laughing with her partner in poetry and in life Lupe Mendez - the Texas State Poet Laureate.

Join Chris in a sit down with Saida Agostini Bostic, author of Let the Dead In (Alan Squire Publishing), about passions, process, pitfalls, and Poetry! Saida’s first collection of poems, let the dead in, was a finalist for the Center of African American Poetry & Poetics’ 2020 Book Prize as well as the New Issues Poetry Prize. She is the author of STUNT (Neon Hemlock, October 2020), a chapbook exploring the history of Nellie Jackson, a Black woman entrepreneur who operated a brothel for sixty years in Natchez, Mississippi. Her poetry can also be found in the Black Ladies Brunch Collective's anthology Not Without Our Laughter, Barrelhouse Magazine, Hobart Pulp, Plume, and other publications.

A Cave Canem Graduate Fellow, Saida has been awarded honors and support for her work by the Watering Hole and Blue Mountain Center, as well as a 2018 Rubys Grant funding travel to Guyana to support the completion of her first manuscript. She is a Best of the Net Finalist and a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee.

Join Chris in a sit down with Dr. Destiny O. Birdsong, author of Nobody’s Magic (Grand Central Publishing) and Negotiations (Tin House), about passions, process, pitfalls, and Poetry! Destiny O. Birdsong is a poet, novelist, and essayist whose work has appeared in the Paris Review Daily, African American Review, and Catapult, among other publications. Her debut poetry collection, Negotiations, was published in 2020 by Tin House and was longlisted for the 2021 PEN/Voelcker Award. Her debut novel, Nobody’s Magic, was published in February 2022 from Grand Central Publishing. During July 2022, she was the Hurston-Wright Foundation’s inaugural Writer-in-Residence at Rutgers University-Newark. She will also serve as an Artist-in-Residence at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville from 2022-2023. Connect with her below.

Join Chris in a sit-down with the legendary Sandra Cisneros, author of the upcoming Woman Without Shame (Alfred A. Knopf), about passions, process, pitfalls, and poetry!

From the Sandra Cisneros Website: 

I was born in Chicago in 1954, the third child and only daughter in a family of seven children. I studied at Loyola University of Chicago (B.A. English, 1976) and the University of Iowa (M.F.A. Creative Writing, 1978).

I've worked as a teacher and counselor to high-school dropouts, as an artist-in-the-schools where I taught creative writing at every level except first grade and pre-school, a college recruiter, an arts administrator, and as a visiting writer at a number of universities including the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

My books include a chapbook of poetry, Bad Boys (Mango Press, 1980); two full-length poetry books, My Wicked Wicked Ways (Third Woman Press, 1987; Random House, 1992) and Loose Woman (Alfred A. Knopf, 1994); a collection of stories, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (Random House, 1991); a children's book, Hairs/Pelitos (Alfred A. Knopf, 1994); the novels The House on Mango Street (Vintage, 1991) and Caramelo (Knopf, 2002), and the picture book Have You Seen Marie? (Knopf 2012). A House of My Own: Stories from My Life (Alfred A. Knopf, 2015)  is a collection of personal essays, and Puro Amor (Sarabande 2018) is a bilingual story that I also illustrated. Forthcoming works include the Spanish and English story Martita, I Remember You/Martita te recuerdo (Vintage 2021) and a poetry collection, Mujer Sin Vergüenza (2022).

Join Chris in a sit-down with Aurielle Marie, author of Gumbo Ya Ya (University of Pittsburgh Press), about passions, process, pitfalls, and poetry!

Award-winning poet, essayist, and cultural strategist Aurielle Marie (they/she) is a Black queer storyteller, a political organizer, and child of the Deep South by way of Atlanta. They received their Bachelor’s in Social Justice Strategy and Hip-Hop Theory from the Evergreen State College.

Aurielle’s poetry has been featured or is forthcoming in the TriQuarterly, Southeast Review, Black Warrior, BOAAT Journal, Sycamore Review, Adroit Journal, Vinyl Poetry, Palette Poetry, and Ploughshares. She's received invitations to fellowships from Lambda Literary, VONA Voices, and Tin House. Aurielle is a 2017 winner of the Blue Mesa Review poetry award. She’s the Lambda Literary 2019 Poetry Emerging Writer-in-Residence. She won the 2019 Ploughshares Emerging Writers Award for Poetry. Aurielle’s poetry debut, Gumbo Ya Ya is the 2020 winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and is out from the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Join Chris in a sit-down with Ink, EiC of Stanza Cannon and author of 61 Central (Finishing Line Press), about passions, process, pitfalls, and poetry! 

Andrew “Ink” Feindt

Most people tend to feel more comfortable with real names, but Ink likes to be called Ink. In an editorial role, he loves working with independent presses and authors to maintain original voices while bringing out the best in their words. As a writer, Ink has been published in journals foreign and domestic and has one book published by Piscataway House Publications (Death Loves a Drinking Game) as well as a chapbook published by Finishing Line Press (61 Central). As a member of an audience, be it at an academic reading, slam, or comedy showcase, Ink generally enjoys the energy of people enthralled by their own wordplay and the wordplay itself even more so.

Join Chris in a sit down with H. MELT, about passions, process, pitfalls, and Poetry! H. Melt is a poet, artist and educator who celebrates trans liberation. They are the author of The Plural, The Blurring and editor of Subject to Change: Trans Poetry & Conversation. Lambda Literary awarded them the Judith A. Markowitz Award for Emerging LGBTQ Writers.