Two Invitations: Pain Baby Book Club + No, Dear Magazine Fundraiser
Welcome springtime by engaging with community!
Today is my last day in Los Angeles after my first experience of AWP. The last few days have been exhilarating, inspiring, validating, and sweet. I could not be gladder for poetry and poetry community, the sheer power it has to unite people in solidarity and resistance to fascism and genocide.
In the spirit of creating more offerings and opportunities to connect across time and place and better understand Palestinian and Lebanese diaspora and culture, I’m launching Pain Baby Book Club and offering it for free for the first three months.
Monday, April 21, 6:30 pm - 7:30 pm ET: Hala Alyan’s When the Moon Turns You Back
The Moon That Turns You Back, Hala Alyan’s most recent and stylistically explorative collection of poetry explores themes of displacement, memory, and identity as a Palestinian-American in Brooklyn, Beirut, Jerusalem, and in the mind of a woman struggling with infertility. We follow her stories of familial fragmentation, displacement, war, and the daily forms of psychological survival required of living in the U.S. while it acts to erase her people.
Monday, May 19, 6:30 pm - 7:30 pm ET: Zeina Hashem Beck’s O
Award-winning Lebanese poet Zeina Hashem Beck’s collection O forges an intuitive dialogue between personal and collective experiences of exile, spirituality, motherhood, and contested memory in a collection that explores forms radically. She invents the “duet” a bilingual form that intertwines Arabic and English, commenting in particular on the 2020 port explosion in Beirut. This collection has been praised for its poignancy, lyricism, and power to transport.
Monday, June 16, 6:30 pm - 7:30 pm ET: Zaina Arafat’s You Exist Too Much
Zaina Arafat’s debut novel, You Exist Too Much, follows the journey of an unnamed bisexual Palestinian-American woman as she navigates cultural, sexual, and personal identities. The narrative unfolds through vignettes spanning the Middle East and the United States, depicting her struggles with love addiction, familial expectations, and the quest for self-acceptance. Her tumultuous relationships and a stint at a treatment center called The Ledge underscore her internal conflicts and longing for belonging. The title reflects her mother’s admonition, encapsulating the protagonist’s enduring challenge of reconciling her multifaceted identity within societal and familial constraints.
Sign up here!
Invitation to No, Dear Magazine Fundraiser
Sunday, April 6, 4:30 pm - 8:00 pm
Enoch’s Midtown, 480 10th Avenue, New York, NY 10018
The world moves at a breakneck pace, but poetry slows it down—shows us that, however long the stampede of bleak days, spring always arrives. Join us Sunday, April 6th, from 4:30 to 8:00 PM at Enoch’s Midtown, 480 10th Ave, for an evening where conversation will take root, libations will flow, and community will blossom. Bring your tender petals, your cool vernal pools, your melancholy snowmelt, your green fire. And pitch in as No, Dear works to provide fertile ground for emerging and established poets to foster conversation aimed at disrupting systems of power and privilege.
Tickets are available on a sliding scale. With your help, we hope to raise upwards of 5K and keep No, Dear growing as a publication that strives to represent and support women-identified poets, poets of color, and poets of all gender expressions. There will be food. There will be music. There will be readings by Shira Erlichman, t'ai freedom ford, Eileen Myles, Jive Poetic, and more. There will be celebration of spring and all you bring to it!
Donation Sliding Scale:
$25+ - Entry Ticket + bites*
$65+ - Entry Ticket + bites* + Drink Ticket** + in-print No, Dear issue
$150+ - Entry Ticket + bites* + 2 Drink Tickets** + out-of-print No, Dear issue
*charcuterie & soft drinks included with entry ticket. cash bar.
**drink tickets can be used for wine provided by Blackbird Vineyards or N/A beverages provided by Minus Moonshine
Schedule of Events:
4:30: DJ Queer Shoulders
5:30: Poetry
6:00: Camellia Quartet
6:45: Poetry
7:15: Nour Jamil (DJ)
venue notes:
ADA accessible, ground floor, some seating available, masks welcome
Whether you’re attending or not, you can register for the silent auction and bid now!
Buy tickets here!
Bid in our silent auction!
Until next time!