City Lights presents Zein El-Amine in conversation with James Tracy and Aimee Suzara, celebrating the publication of "Is This How You Eat a Watermelon?" by Zein El-Amine, published by Radix Media. This live event took place in the main room of City Lights and was hosted by Peter Maravelis.

You can purchase copies of "Is This How You Eat a Watermelon?" directly from City Lights here: https://citylights.com/general-fiction/is-this-how-you-eat-a-watermelon-2/

Zein El-Amine is a Lebanese-born poet and writer. He has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Maryland. His poems have appeared in Wild River Review, Folio, Beltway Quarterly, Foreign Policy In Focus, CityLit, and others. His latest poetry manuscript “A Travel Guide for the Exiled” was recently shortlisted for the Bergman Prize, judged by Louise Glück. His short stories have appeared in the Uno Mas, Jadaliyya, Middle East Report, Wild River Review, About Place Journal, and in Bound Off.

James Tracy is an author, organizer, and an Instructor of Labor and Community Studies at City College of San Francisco. He is the co-author of "Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels and Black Power: Community Organizing in Radical Times" and the author of "Dispatches Against Displacement: Field Notes From San Francisco’s Housing Wars."

Aimee Suzara is a Filipino-American poet, playwright, and performer based in Oakland, CA. Her poetry and plays have been produced, adapted, and published widely, and she has collaborated with a variety of choreographers, musicians and dance companies for multidisciplinary productions. A cultural worker and professional educator for the past twenty years, she tailors and offers lectures, performances and workshops to organizations, universities, and classrooms. She’s been featured as a spoken word artist nationally, and her poems appear in numerous journals and anthologies such as Kartika Review, 580 Split, Lantern Review and Walang Hiya: Literature Taking Risks Toward Liberatory Practice, Check the Rhyme: An Anthology of Female Poets and Emcees and Poets (Lit Noire Press) and her chapbooks, "the space between" and "Finding the Bones" (Finishing Line Press). An advocate for the intersection of arts and literacy, she teaches at San Francisco State University and other universities and colleges and leads workshops in poetry and performance for youth and adults.

This event was made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation: citylights.com/foundation