Literary | Talks
Ink Knows No Borders
- 7PM
Single Tickets
With poets Safia Elhillo, Carlos Andrés Gómez, Chrysanthemum Tran, and Javier Zamora
Co-presented by BAM and Greenlight Bookstore
Launch of Ink Knows No Borders: Poems of the Immigrant and Refugee Experience.
Renowned poets Safia Elhillo, Carlos Andrés Gómez, Chrysanthemum Tran, and Javier Zamora celebrate the launch of Ink Knows No Borders: Poems of the Immigrant and Refugee Experience. This new collection, published by Seven Stories Press and edited by Patrice Vecchione and Alyssa Raymond, focuses on the experiences of first- and second-generation immigrants and refugees.
The evening begins with readings by the poets of their own work and others within the collection that have inspired them, followed by a conversation moderated by Zamora. The event concludes with an open dialogue with the audience, who is invited to ask questions. Patrice Vecchione, co-editor of the collection, will introduce the program.
Safia Elhillo is a Sudanese-American poet and writer. She is the author of The January Children, which won the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets and the Arab American Book Award, and was a nominee for the 2015 Pushcart Prize. She was the co-winner of the 2015 Brunel International African Poetry Prize, included on Forbes Africa’s “30 Under 30” list in 2018, and awarded a 2018 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Callaloo, and several anthologies.
Carlos Andrés Gómez is a Colombian-American poet and the author of the memoir Man Up: Reimagining Modern Manhood. He is the recipient of the Atlanta Review International Poetry Prize, the Editor’s Reprint Award from Sequestrum, and a Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize and is a two-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize. He has appeared on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and recently partnered with John Legend on a high school mentorship program called Senior Orientation, which fosters inclusive masculinity. For more, carloslive.com.
Chrysanthemum Tran is a nationally touring poet, performer, and educator based in Rhode Island by way of Oklahoma. In 2016, she became the first trans woman finalist in the Women of the World Poetry Slam. She is a Pink Door Fellow, as well as a Rustbelt and FEMS Poetry Slam Champion. Her work can be found in Them., The Offing, and the Bettering American Poetry anthology, among others.
Javier Zamora is an El Salvador-born poet who migrated to the US when he was nine. He is a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University and holds fellowships from CantoMundo, Colgate University, the Lannan Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Foundation, Stanford University, and Yaddo. Zamora’s poetry and prose have appeared in Granta, The Kenyon Review, Poetry, and The New York Times, among others. His first collection, Unaccompanied, was released in 2017. More at: javierzamora.net.