Muxeres Monday
Oct
24
5:00 AM05:00

Muxeres Monday

Muxeres Monday: a quarterly happy hour reading series for all who identify as womxn, where they can hang their hats, labels, and media headlines at the door in order to embrace an evening of literary inspiration from diverse authors — while sharing culinary delights, empowerment and joy in our daily lives.

View Event →
Muse Found in a Colonized Body Book Launch
Oct
21
7:00 PM19:00

Muse Found in a Colonized Body Book Launch

Join us for the launch of Yesenia Montilla’s "Muse Found in a Colonized Body" at Word Up with special guests Aracelis Girmay, Roberto Carlos Garcia, Sheila Maldonado, and Kathy Engel.

This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket with 30 max attendees. Please register in advance. This event is limited to 30 people max.

In compliance with Word Up Community Safety guidelines, all attendees for this event must show proof of vaccination and I.and must remain masked at all times. Please arrive at least 30 minutes before the event so we can check vaccination cards and ID.

Word Up Community Bookshop is located at 2113 Amsterdam Ave. (& 165th St.) in Washington Heights, NYC. You can take the 1 train to 168th St and the A/C train to 163rd or 168th St.

View Event →
We Are So Much Water: Afro-Latina Writers On Writing Across Forms
Oct
8
4:00 PM16:00

We Are So Much Water: Afro-Latina Writers On Writing Across Forms

In this interactive performance and panel, Yesenia Montilla, Jasminne Mendez, and Raina J. León share work from new collections that experiment and play across poetic forms and genres. They speak to embracing the embodied truth, moving with the waters that connect us, recognizing work in relationship to cultural communities, and dancing in boldness of the swagger of creation. They call out to you, “Come. Creation is the gift of your being!” Come and know: you never need permission to be the artist you already are. $20 adv / $20 door. This venue asks that masks be worn at all times while inside.

View Event →
Brooklyn Book Festival
Oct
2
3:00 PM15:00

Brooklyn Book Festival

Poets Wo Chan (Togetherness), John Keene (Punks: New & Selected Poetry), Yesenia Montilla (Muse Found in a Colonized Body), and Claire Schwartz (Civil Service) discuss how language serves as a tool for discovering one’s place in the world, while also investigating loss, grief and the possibilities of desire and joy

View Event →
Notre Dame: Afro Latinx Poetry Now
Sep
27
to Sep 28

Notre Dame: Afro Latinx Poetry Now

  • Notre Dame University (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

A renowned group of 12 poets and scholars from across the country will convene at the University of Notre Dame from Sept. 27–28 for a dynamic cultural event featuring talks, conversations, and performances that will showcase the vitality and diversity of contemporary poetry.

For more information: LINK

View Event →
NOW Suffolk Reading
Sep
17
11:00 AM11:00

NOW Suffolk Reading

An all-star panel of poets will read in response to the SCOTUS decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Q&A/open mic to follow as time permits. Please register here: LINK

Amy King
Amy M. Alvarez
Barbara Ann Branca
Cathleen Calbert
Daisy Fried
Jane LeCroy
Kenny Gordon
Larissa Shmailo
Miriam Stanley
Nancy Keating
Omotara James
Rosa Todaro
Sheri Lynn
Terri Muuss
Vicki Iorio
Yesenia Montilla

View Event →
Apr
30
7:00 PM19:00

Don't Touch My Hair Reading Series Presents: Cheryl Boyce Taylor & Roberto Carlos Garcia

Join us for an intimate reading and discussion on poetry, elegy and grief. Moderated by Yesenia Montilla as part of her Don’t Touch My Hair Reading Series with Word Up Community Bookshop

The readers for the evening will be:

Cheryl Boyce-Taylor is a poet and teaching artist. She earned an MFA from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine and an MSW from Fordham University. Her collections of poetry include Raw Air (2000), Night When Moon Follows (2000), Convincing the Body (2005), and Arrival (2017), which was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize. Her latest collection Mama Phife Represents was published in 2021 with Haymarket Books.

Poet, storyteller, and essayist Roberto Carlos Garcia is a self-described “sancocho […] of provisions from the Harlem Renaissance, the Spanish Poets of 1929, the Black Arts Movement, the Nuyorican School, and the Modernists.” Garcia is rigorously interrogative of himself and the world around him, conveying “nakedness of emotion, intent, and experience,” and he writes extensively about the Afro-Latinx and Afro-diasporic experience. Roberto's third collection, [Elegies], is published by Flower Song Press and his second poetry collection, black / Maybe: An Afro Lyric, is available from Willow Books. Roberto’s first collection, Melancolía, is available from Červená Barva Press.

View Event →
Mar
30
12:00 PM12:00

La Raza Cósmica and Other Myths: Telling the Truth About Race Thru Latinx Poetics

  • AWP Portland - Oregon Convention Center (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

The diversity of Latinx racial experience defies easy categorization. European colonization produced a hemisphere riddled with caste, vexed by color, and afflicted by an adoration of whiteness. Imperialism, diasporas, and borders only complicate; overlaying power structure over power structure, erasing and muddling convoluted. This panel will explore the poetics that might best communicate the nuanced reality of our raza cósmica, and to try to re-imagine the Americas through poetry.

View Event →
Dec
5
to Dec 7

Writing Workshop on Migration

This is a free write workshop that I will be facilitating Wednesday December 5, 6 and 7th from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. This workshop is sponsored by CantoMundo, Frontline Arts, MobilePrint Power, La Morada. Additional support from Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race and School of General Studies’ Office of Student Life. Free and Open to the Public.

View Event →