It's A Big Fat July!
Invitations! Announcements! Reviews!
It’s a bonus post full of little goodies, friends! Somehow, I have five readings this July, three of them upcoming! Reading at The Parlor rejuvenated and enthralled me. Organizers Emily Roese and Andrea Abello curated a line-up of readers who brought silky, sweaty, sexy poems that led to an even sexier afterparty, changing the way I think of the possibilities of a reading space forever. Reading at Bard Simon’s Rock for high school writers, including a former student, helped me see just how powerful writing can still be and how much literature can inform and shape our destinies—an important reminder in a moment where the arts are under severe threat. On that note, please join me at any or all of the upcoming readings, hit me up about my announcements, read my recommendations of a novel, book of poetry, and song that are inspiring me, and enjoy this photograph of me reading in a ball pit—an experience I had no idea I had been waiting for my whole life:
No more queer picnic: Alas, due to this homophobic peal of storms, our Queer, Trans, and Allies picnic originally scheduled for today is CANCELED. Elly and I hope to reschedule for another time when the weather is more consistently picnic-friendly. Apologies to all those who were planning to join us. Please stay tuned for a new date!
Invitations to Upcoming Readings
Monday, July 17: The Muktadhara Foundation’s Bangla Boimela, or Bangla Book Festival, is hosting a series of panels and performances on Monday evening at the Jamaica Performing Arts Center! I’ll be reading my work and answering questions about the writing process in a subsequent Q&A. I am very proud to be sharing the space with my dear friend, the incredibly talented dancer and choreographer Ishita Mili, whose dance company, IMGE, does some of the most innovative and beautiful movement work I’ve likely ever seen (strongly encourage you all to check out the videos on Instagram), and Nadia Q. Ahmad, whose poetry stuns and moves, and with whom I was also honored to share space in the most recent issue of The Indiana Review. Roll through for some Bangla excellence, y’all! Further details on the flyer below:
Friday, July 21: I am a long-time admirer of the power and warmth of my friend, the brilliant Chicago queer and non-binary Filipinx poet and organizer Christian Aldana, co-founder of Luya Poetry I am so honored to invite them to launch their debut poetry collection, The Water We Swim In (Sampaguita Press, 2023) in New York City. Please join us for their launch reading and party on Friday next week featuring José Olivarez, Rohan Zhou-Lee, Maria Marbella, and me! at Brooklyn Artery, 1004 Cortelyou Rd., 7:30 PM-9:30 PM, with an afterparty at Sycamore Bar & Flower Shop. Join us for this Brooklyn-Chicago collab sweetness!
Christian will also be celebrating their book the next day, Saturday, July 22 at The People’s Forum, with readings and performances by Dana Ysabel, Maria Marbella, Las Mariquitas, an open mic, and a community market!
Sunday, July 30: As guest editor of the most recent issue of No, Dear Magazine, I am reading with Toney Lombardi, Kearah-Armonie, and Tash Nikol to represent this little juggernaut journal at the New York Poetry Festival on Governor’s Island! It’s a free weekend of readings, workshops, open mics, installations, performances, writing activities, bookselling, children’s programming, a beer garden, delicious food, and a chill, garden party vibe. Come along for some summer poetry!
Announcements
The Sealey Challenge: I have made peace with the fact that my original plan to finish my poetry collection by the end of July was overly ambitious. I will take the time and opportunity to re-read collections that moved me with an eye toward what I can learn as I continue developing mine, and read so many of the collections that I’ve bought and never gotten around to, by doing #thesealeychallenge2023 next month! For those of you who are unfamiliar, The Sealey Challenge, developed by the poet Nicole Sealey, is an invitation to readers of poetry to read a collection, chapbook, or journal a day for the entire month of August and share the journey on social media. The practice builds community around poetry and introduces readers and their friends to a diverse range of voices in the poetry landscape. I’ll be writing microreviews of each, and sharing them here on Substack periodically. See my stack below, and stay tuned!
In Surreal Life: In Surreal Life registration closes on July 25! If you’re a creative who could use a community with which to stretch, expand, evolve, and test your boundaries, have Shira Erlichman, Judith Ohikuare, and me facilitate your journey with the August 2023 cohort in response to incredibly generative daily prompts by Shira! Our visiting artists this month are the extraordinary Chen Chen, Edgar Kunz, Camonghne Felix, and of course Shira Erlichman!
We are looking for a marketing manager! If you’re a social media wiz and love uplifting fabulous artistic communities, send us an application! Feel free to reach out with any questions!
Possible Arts Salon: I may have an opportunity to curate a series of events in which I would be co-curating line-ups of artists and writers to present their work, followed by an open-mic, in Sunset Park. My hope is to promote the work of local artists, particularly BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ voices, and create an opportunity to break bread, make friends, share, and collaborate. If you’ve also always wanted to have an art salon and live in New York City, please reach out for some scheming and plotting!
Reviews and Recommendations
Novel: Amina Akther’s Kismet: I’ve taken a lot of pleasure this week in Amina Akther’s murder mystery and thriller, Kismet. I was introduced to Akther on the excellent podcast Unlikeable Female Characters in the "episode “Eat, Slay, Loathe: Amina Akther’s Kismet,” where she was featured, perhaps, because so many of the women in her book are gawd-awful, and very enjoyably so. Her protagonist, Ronnie Khan is a Pakistani-American Queens-native trapped in a house with her comically evil (we’re talking Zee-TV soap opera villain evil) aunt after her parents are killed in a car crash in childhood. A rich, white, blonde “empowerment coach,” Marlee Dewhurst, gives her a lifeline, and the two of them move to the desert climes of Sedona, Arizona to ‘find their best selves.’ Sedona is a haven for wellness gurus. Ronnie is thrust into a world where wine-chugging, mantra-chanting, crystal-rubbing, “namaste”-saying white ladies in kaftans charge and pay enormous amounts of money to heal and be healed, apply petty middle school social logic to their friendships, remain blindly oblivious to the ways they replicate conservative fear-mongering against strangers, and trade in orientalising stereotypes that test Ronnie’s shy and tentative nature, particularly when someone starts murdering the worst of the town’s characters. This novel takes sharp aim at wellness culture’s dire need of deep decolonization, explores the how that South Asian Americans have to navigate a variety of different kinds of ignorance and assumptions, and illuminates the frustrations and fears we experience when our life stories, in fact, do fit some of the stereotypes people hold about “oppressive people from oppressive cultures.” Very satisfying. The villains of the story are a bit overwrought, sometimes to the point of caricature, but because it’s tongue-in-cheek, it’s what makes the novel so hilarious. If you’re a fan of birds, an unkindness of ravens (that’s really what flocks of them are called!) is a collective character that deems itself an arbiter of moral quality among Sedona’s humans. Fabulous beach reading. Oh, and there are barely any men in the whole novel. Refreshing, frankly.
Poetry: Noah Arhm Choi’s Cut to Bloom: Noah Arhm Choi is one of the warmer poets I’ve been glad to befriend in recent years, and it gave me joy to re-read their collection this week. Their debut book, Cut to Bloom, maps the progression from living as a terrified child in an unsafe household shaped by the ravages of the “forgotten” Korean War and violent alcoholism to finding new approaches to security, family, and queer and trans self-determination in adulthood. Their poems explore what it means to negotiate identities that have no language or legitimized social space in Korea while participating in queer trans life in America, falling in love, learning to vulnerable through a traumatized consciousness, and finding beauty in struggle. I’ve heard Noah read at a variety of readings in New York, and am routinely stunned by the beauty and vulnerability of their work. Strong recommend.
Music: “People” by Libianca: This song expresses a desperate, lonely cry for help from a woman coping through alcohol and weed, and it is so heartbreakingly beautiful. I’m obsessed.
Until next time!
Ashna