The louderARTS Project Present
LEAF Lit LIve! Spoken Word Poetry Salon #4
Tune in on Facebook Live at LEAF Global Arts https://www.facebook.com/theLEAF.org/
FORWARD
Vision • Cheerfulness • Joy
A Virtual Literary Reading and Conversation
Our Featured Poets and Emcees
Cheryl Boyce Taylor • Rico Fredrick • Samatha Thornhill
Yesenia Montilla • Lynne Procope (emcee) • James Navé (emcee)
We have the power to change
the end of the story.
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2020
7 PM ET • 6 PM CT • 5 PM MT • 4 PM PT
Tune in on Facebook Live at LEAF Global Arts
Our Featured Poets and Emcees
Cheryl Boyce Taylor • Rico Fredrick • Samatha Thornhill
Yesenia Montilla • Lynne Procope (emcee) • James Navé (emcee)
It’s time to let black, brown, and indigenous artists push the boundaries of ART and be genuinely seen and heard.
“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”
Cheryl Boyce Taylor
Cheryl Boyce-Taylor is a poet and workshop facilitator. The recipient of the 2015 Barnes and Noble Writers For Writers Award, she is the founder and curator of Calypso Muse and the Glitter Pomegranate Performance Series. Cheryl earned an MFA in Poetry from Stonecoast: The University of Southern Maine, and an MSW from Fordham University. She is the author of four collections of poetry: Raw Air, Night When Moon Follows, Convincing the Body, and Arrival. A poetry judge for The New York Foundation for the Arts, and The Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, she has facilitated poetry workshops for Cave Canem, Poets & Writers, and The Caribbean Literary and Cultural Center. Her poetry has been commissioned by The Joyce Theater and the National Endowment for the Arts for Ronald K. Brown: Evidence, A Dance Company. A VONA fellow, her work has been published in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Pluck!, Killings Journal of Arts & Letters, and Adrienne. Her life papers and portfolio are stored at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in NYC.
Rico Fredrick
Rico Frederick is an award-winning performance poet, graphic designer, and the author of the book Broken Calypsonian (2014). He was the first poet to represent all four New York City poetry venues at the National Poetry Slam, of which he was Grand Slam Champion in 2010 and 2012. His poems, artistic work, and films have been featured in the New York Times, Muzzle, No Dear Magazine, The Big Apple Film Festival, and elsewhere. He is a Trinidadian transplant living in New York City.
Samantha Thronhill
Samantha Thornhill is a poet, educator and published author from the twin island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. Formerly a poetry instructor for the Juilliard School, Poets & Writers and the Cooper Union, she has taught a wide spectrum of students across New York City for over a decade. An alumna of the University of Virginia's MFA program for poetry, Thornhill is frequently invited to share her work at festivals and university events in the US and internationally. In 2010, she co-founded Poetry in Unexpected Places, a New York Times–featured group that created pop-up poetry installations in public spaces. Her poems have been published in dozens of anthologies, journals and digital outlets. Her third children’s book, A Card for My Father, was published by Penny Candy Books. Her first collection of poetry is forthcoming from Peepal Tree Press.
Yesenia Montilla
Yesenia Montilla
Yesenia Montilla is an Afro-Latina poet & a daughter of immigrants. Her poetry has appeared in Gulf Coast, Prairie Schooner, & others. She received her MFA from Drew University & is a CantoMundo graduate fellow. Her first collection The Pink Box was Longlisted for a PEN award in 2016. Her second collection Muse Found in a Colonized Body is forthcoming (Four Way Books, 2022). Hobart Festival of Women Writers says, “Yesenia Montilla’s work is characterized by a gentle, sensitive forthright voice that speaks to the pain and triumphs of her experiences as an Afro-Latina. Her poems The Day I Realized We Were Black and Ode To A Dominican Breakfast are published in the inaugural issue of The Wider Short, a journal committed to publishing poetry that reveals and unearths that which has been hidden, masked, buried, or unexpressed.”
Your Emcees
Lynne Procope
Lynne Procope
Lynne Procope is a Trinidad-born American poet, Cave Canem fellow, a former National Poetry Slam champion and a co-author of the collaborative collection, Burning Down the House (Soft Skull). Her poems appear in magazines, journals, reviews and anthologies across the hemisphere. She writes, travels, teaches, edits, curates and seeks transformative learning in all of it. She is the former executive director and a cofounder of the louderARTS Project.
James Navé
James Navé Photo credit: John van Hasselt, Getty Images
James Navé has performed for the public well over 10,000 times over his long career as a poet, teacher, and storyteller. As co-founder of the landmark performance company Poetry Alive!, he memorized over 600 poems and has performed shows and workshops in the United States and International Schools throughout West Africa, South America, Asia, and Europe. Navé holds an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and Navé has been the Poetry Slam emcee for Asheville, NC's LEAF Festival, and an advisory team of LEAF Global Arts since 1995. His latest book of poems, The 100 Days, will be published by 3: A Taos Press in late 2021. Navé once owned a pizza restaurant on the coast of Carolina, won a poetry slam at Chicago's Green Mill with a perfect 30 score, and camped out on a rooftop in Manhattan in mid-September so he could watch the Empire State Building, the full moon, and the World Trade Center's two beams of memorial light.
Support our artists! Suggested donation for this event is $15. Your donation will go directly to the poets.