In Our Voice: a Poetry Reading by Kateema Lee, Steven Leyva, Saidaagostini and Alan King

In Our Voice: a Poetry Reading
by Kateema Lee, Steven Leyva, SaidaAgostini and Alan King

Wednesday, February 28, 2018, 1 – 2:00 p.m.
Germantown Campus Library (HS110)

Biographies

Kateema Lee is a Washington D. C. native and English Professor at the Germantown Campus of Montgomery College. She is a Cave Canem Fellow, a Callaloo Workshop fellow, and an associate editor for the Potomac Review. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in print and online journals such as African American Review, Poet Lore, Gargoyle, andPMS:Poemmemoirstory, among others. Her first bookwas recently published:Almost Invisible.

SaidaAgostiniis a queer afro-guyanese poet and activist. She is the Chief Operating Officer forFORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture, a survivor led artist collective dedicated to resisting rape culture. As COO, Saida supports FORCE in sustaining and expanding its capacity to engage in survivor-led, movement-building work. She is also the founding member of the Rooted Collective, a liberatory gathering of Black LGBTQ people to define, dream, and expand on the ways we heal from oppression. A published poet and writer, Saida's work is featured or forthcoming in the Black Ladies Brunch Collective's anthology,Not Without Our Laughter, theBaltimore Sun, pluck!, The Little Patuxent Review,and other publications. Saida has received fellowships in support of her poetry and resistance work from Cave Canem, the Leeway Foundation, and other institutions. She was recently awarded a Ruby grant to support the development of her first full-length collection of poems,uprisings in a state of joy.

Alan King is a poet and journalist, living in the DC metropolitan area. He writes about art anddomestic issues on his blog. In addition to teaching at Duke Ellington, he’s also the senior programdirector at the DC Creative Writing Workshop, a Cave Canem fellow and VONA Alum. Alan iscurrently a Stonecoast MFA candidate and has been nominated for both a Best of the Net selectionand Pushcart Prize. His book, Drift, was published by Willow Books in January.

Steven Leyva was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and raised in Houston, Texas. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in2 Bridges Review, Fledgling Rag, The Light Ekphrastic, The CobaltReview, and Prairie Schooner. He is a Cave Canem fellow, winner of the 2012 Cobalt Review Poetry Prize,and author of the chapbook Low Parish. Steven holds a MFA from the University of Baltimore, where he is an assistant professor in the School of Communication Design.