AWP Offsite: BreakBeat Poets Feature

Join us offsite during #AWP2019 for a BreakBeat Poets feature, with readings by Camonghne Felix, Britteney Black Rose Kapri, José Olivarez, Fatimah Asghar, Safia Elhillo, and other special guests.

Hosted by Nate Marshall. Sponsored by Haymarket Books.

Camonghne Felix is a poet, political strategist, media junkie, and cultural worker. She received an MA in arts politics from NYU, an MFA from Bard College, and has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Callaloo, and Poets House. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she is the author of the chapbook Yolk and was listed by Black Youth Project as a “Black Girl from the Future You Should Know.” Her first book, Build Yourself a Boat, is releasing April 2019 on Haymarket Books.

Britteney Black Rose Kapri is a poet, teaching artist, petty enthusiast and Slytherin from Chicago. Currently she is an alumna turned Teaching Artist Fellow at Young Chicago Authors. She is a staff member for Black Nerd Problems and Pink Door Women’s Writing Retreat. Her first chapbook titled “Winona and Winthrop” was published in June of 2014 through New School Poetics. She has also been published in the Breakbeat Poets volume One & Two, Poetry Magazine, Vinyl, Day One, Seven Scribes, The Offing, Kinfolks Quarterly and her number on many dive bar bathroom walls. She is a 2015 Rona Jaffe Writers Award Recipient. You can probably find her on twitter talking shit about all the things you love, in a classroom talking shit about your kids or at a barstool just talking shit. Her first book, Black Queer Hoe, was released September 2018 on Haymarket Books.

José Olivarez is the son of Mexican immigrants. His debut book of poems, Citizen Illegal, was awarded the 2018 Chicago Review of Books Poetry Prize, and it was named a top book of 2018 by NPR and the New York Public Library. Along with Felicia Chavez and Willie Perdomo, he is co-editing the forthcoming anthology, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT. He is the co-host of the poetry podcast, The Poetry Gods and a recipient of fellowships from CantoMundo, Poets House, the Bronx Council on the Arts, the Poetry Foundation, & the Conversation Literary Festival. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. In 2018, he was awarded the first annual Author and Artist in Justice Award from the Phillips Brooks House Association and named a Debut Poet of 2018 by Poets & Writers. He lives in New York City.

Fatimah Asghar is the co-creator of the Emmy-Nominated web series Brown Girls. She is the author of If They Come For Us and a recipient of a 2017 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship. In 2017, she was listed on Forbes’s 30 Under 30 list.

Safia Elhillo is the author of The January Children. Sudanese by way of Washington, DC, and a Cave Canem fellow, she holds an MFA from the New School. In 2018, she was awarded a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation.

Nate Marshall is from the South Side of Chicago. He is the author of Wild Hundreds and an editor of The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop. Wild Hundreds has been honored with the Black Caucus of the American Library Association’s award for Poetry Book of the Year and The Great Lakes College Association’s New Writer Award. His last rap album, Grown came out in 2015 with his group Daily Lyrical Product. Nate’s next book FINNA is due out 2020 via One World Books an imprint of Penguin Random House.