Poetry & Magic (Offsite AWP Reading)

Make magick with us during AWP!

An evening designed to draw down the intimate relationship between poetry and magic, to create the terrain of rhythm, form and shape where word and enchantment walk together. Let’s charge ourselves for personal, spiritual, and political transformation.

Featuring:

Katy Bohinc
Lee Ann Brown
Dominique Christina
Joshua Davis
Annie Finch
Monica Mody
Genevieve Pfeiffer
Sheree Renée Thomas
Joanna C. Valente

Thursday, March 28 @ 8pm

The Raven’s Wing Magical Co.
7927 SE 13th Ave, Portland, OR 97202

Free admission.

Curated by Monica Mody and Annie Finch.

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BIOS

Katy Bohinc is the author of Dear Alain (Tender Buttons, 2014), letters to the French philosopher Alain Badiou about poetry, philosophy, and love, and a book of poems about the divine feminine, Trinity Star Trinity (Scarlet Imprint, 2017). Publisher’s Weekly describes her most recent title, Scorpio (Miami University Press, 2018) as “an astute, witty, feminist collection.”

Dominique Christina is an author of four books, licensed educator, 2 time Women of the World Slam Champion, 2011 National Poetry Slam Champion, and 2013 National Underground Poetry Individual Slam Champion. She is the only person to win the Women of the World Championship twice. Her work is influenced by her family’s legacy during the Civil Rights Movement. Her grandfather, who is in the baseball hall of fame, was a shortstop for the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro Leagues. Dominique’s aunt is a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient for being one of 9 students who desegregated Central High School in Little Rock Arkansas. Dominique is sought after to teach and perform at colleges and universities nationally and internationally every year. Her work appears in numerous literary journals and anthologies. She is an actor and writer for the HBO series High Maintenance and is a National Poetry Series Winner for her fourth book “Anarcha Speaks” published by Beacon Press.

A former John and Renee Grisham fellow, Joshua Davis holds an MFA from the University of Mississippi, an MFA from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine, and an M.A. from Pittsburg State University. Recent poems have appeared in Muse/A, The Museum of Americana, and The Midwest Quarterly. He is a doctoral candidate in American Literature at Ohio University, and he lives near Tampa.

Annie Finch is an award-winning poet, writer, speaker, and ritual performance artist, Her books include Eve, Calendars, Spells: New and Selected Poems and The Poetry Witch Little Book of Spells. Annie’s poetry appears in Poetry, The New York Times, Paris Review, onstage at Carnegie Hall, and in The Penguin Book of Twentieth-Century American Poetry. Her ritual drama about sacred abortion, Among the Goddesses: An Epic Libretto in Seven Dreams, was honored with the Sarasvati Award in Poetry from the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology. Dr. Finch holds a Ph.D from Stanford University. She has performed her poetry and poetic ritual theater at Deepak Chopra’s ABC Homespace, Emerging Women Conference, and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and is the creator of “Five Directions Workshops,” a transformational path for realizing psychological and spiritual growth through rhythmic language.

Monica Mody has an MFA from the University of Notre Dame where she was a postgraduate Sparks Writing Fellow. KALA PANI, her book of cross-genre poetry, is out from 1913 Press. Monica is a cowrie shell and voice diviner in the Dagara tradition and a practitioner of borderlands earth-ecstatic traditions. She just defended her doctoral dissertation at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where through poetry and autohisoria for South Asian motherlines and feminisms, she reclaims the poet’s role in healing as a decolonial task. Her work also appears in Poetry International, &Now Awards 2, Eleven Eleven, Boston Review, The Volta, and Dusie, among other places. She has in the past been the recipient of the Zora Neale Hurston Scholarship at Naropa’s Summer Writing Program, and the Toto Funds the Arts Award for Creative Writing.

Sheree Renée Thomas is an award-winning short fiction writer, poet, and editor with fellowships and residencies from the Millay Colony of Arts, Bread Loaf Environmental, VCCA, and Smith College. Her work appears in Sycorax’s Daughters, Do Not Go Quietly, Memphis Noir, Stories for Chip, So Long Been Dreaming, Ghost Fishing, The Ringing Ear (University of Georgia Press), Apex Magazine, Fiyah, Fireside, Strange Horizons, Harvard’s Transition, Callaloo, and The New York Times. She edited the Dark Matter speculative fiction volumes that won two World Fantasy Awards. Her short story collection, Sleeping Under the Tree of Life (Aqueduct Press) was longlisted for the 2016 James Tiptree, Jr. Award and honored with a Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Shotgun Lullabies (Aqueduct), was described as a “revelatory work like Jean Toomer’s Cane.” She serves as the Associate Editor of Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora (Illinois State University, Normal) and Founding Editor of Mojo. Look for Trouble the Waters: Tales of the Deep Blue (Rosarium, 2019) and her new story collection, Nine Bar Blues (Third Man Books. 2020). She lives in Memphis, Tennessee.

Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. They are the author of Sirs & Madams, The Gods Are Dead, Marys of the Sea, Sexting Ghosts, Xenos, No(body) (forthcoming, Madhouse Press, 2019), and is the editor of A Shadow Map: Writing by Survivors of Sexual Assault. They received their MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College. Joanna is the founder of Yes Poetry and the senior managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine.