The season of illumination is near! Spring arrives on March 20th and so does the 7th Annual Bread Loaf Writers from the Dark Tower Reading at Sunday Salon. This highly anticipated event features talented writers of color, who’ve connected and cultivated their work at past Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences. Our magnificent MC for the evening, Charles Rice-Gonzalez, will welcome to the stage five incredibly talented poets and writers, who’ll share their insights on race and identity. You won’t want to miss this! At Jimmys no. 43. 7pm. Much gratitude to Ru Freeman for curating this special event each year!
Allison Albino studied creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and has a Master of Arts in French Literature from New York University. She has participated in workshops with Mark Doty at the 92nd Street Y and has attended the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference for the past two summers. She teaches French at the Dalton School and has poems forthcoming in the Apeiron Review, These Fragile Lilacs Poetry Journal and Poetry Northwest.
Natalie Diaz was born in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California. She earned a BA from Old Dominion University, where she received a full athletic scholarship. Diaz played professional basketball in Europe and Asia before returning to Old Dominion to earn an MFA. She is the author of the poetry collection When My Brother Was an Aztec (2012), which New York Times reviewer Eric McHenry described as an “ambitious … beautiful book.” Her honors and awards include the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, the Louis Untermeyer Scholarship in Poetry from Bread Loaf, the Narrative Poetry Prize, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship.
Monica Sok is a Cambodian poet from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She is the author of Year Zero, winner of the 2015 PSA Chapbook Fellowship 30 and Under, selected by Marilyn Chin. A Kundiman fellow, Sok has received scholarships from Squaw Valley, Napa Valley, and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The New Republic, Narrative, Crab Orchard Review, and Ninth Letter, among others. Sok holds a MFA in Creative Writing from New York University, and currently lives in Brooklyn.
Shubha Sunder’s fiction has appeared in Crazyhorse, where it won the 2015 Crazyhorse Short Fiction Prize; Narrative Magazine, where it was a winner of “30 Below;” Michigan Quarterly Review, and The Bangalore Review. She is currently at work on her first novel, titled Boomtown Girl, set in her hometown of Bangalore, India. She lives in Boston.
Michelle Whittaker is a poet and pianist. Her work has recently appeared in Vinyl Poetry, Drunken Boat, The Southampton Review, Great Weather for Media, Long Island Quarterly, and New Yorker. She has received a Jody Donahue Poetry Prize, a Pushcart Special Mention, and Cave Canem Fellowship.
GUEST MC
Charles Rice-González was born in Puerto Rico and reared in the Bronx. He is a writer, community and LGBT activist and Executive Director of BAAD! The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance. His debut novel, Chulito, was published by Alyson Books in April 2010 and he edited a queer Latino Anthology published by Tincture, a new imprint of Lethe Press, in September 2010. You can find him at: http://www.charlesricegonzalez.com.
