About this Event

Join us in store as we celebrate the release of Knucklehead, a collection of poems by Tony Keith Jr.

Tony Keith Jr is a Black American gay poet, spoken word artist, and hip-hop educational leader from Washington D.C. He is the author of a memoir in verse How the Boogeyman Became a Poet. Keith's writing have appeared the International Journal of Critical Media Literacy, the Journal of Black Masculinity, and many others. A multiyear fellow of the DC Commission of the Arts and Humanities, with a PhD in education from George Mason University, Keith is CEO of Ed Emcee Academy and lives with his husband, Harry Christian III, in DC.

Knucklehead is a love letter to Black boys and men, who Keith affectionately calls "knuckleheads." This collection of poetry affirms the many forms of Black masculinity.

Second Wind Poetry is a curated open mic with a purpose to reenergize everyone involved. Through powerful voices both new and familiar, and an exciting featured poet, Second Wind Poetry Night is sure to leave you feeling inspired, prepared, and hopeful for what’s ahead!

Please note: RSVPs are not mandatory, but encouraged. You may let us know you’re coming here.

CURATOR AND HOST:

Alexa Patrick

FEATURE:

Clint Smith

MUSIC BY:

DJ Franky J

OPEN MIC LIST:

Roya Marsh
Gabriel Ramirez
Carlynn Newhouse
Sasa Aakil
Malachi 'MalPractice' Byrd

BOOKSTORE PARTNER:

Mahogany Books

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ABOUT OUR FEATURE:

Clint Smith is the author of the narrative nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, which was a #1 New York Times bestseller, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism, the Stowe Prize, and selected by the New York Times as one of the 10 best books of 2021. He is also the author of the New York Times bestselling poetry collection Above Ground and the award-winning poetry collection Counting Descent. His writing has been published in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Poetry Magazine, the Paris Review, and elsewhere. Smith received his BA in English from Davidson College and a PhD in Education from Harvard University. He is a staff writer at the Atlantic.

Join our Community Crochet Circle led by Dwayne Lawson-Brown (aka the Crochet Kingpin) on second Wednesdays, where the worlds of visual art and textile craft intertwine. Each month, we will select a work of art from The Phillips Collection as inspiration for our crochet projects. Let your imagination unfurl as we stitch stories inspired by the beauty of visual art, one loop at a time. 

All skill levels and ages are welcome. Advanced participants are invited to bring fiber arts projects that they are working on while beginners can receive basic instructions on crocheting. Yarn and crochet hooks will be provided. 

February 12 event special guest: get creative with ekphrastic poetry by Alexa Patrick. 

Born and raised in Washington, DC, Dwayne Lawson-Brown, aka the Crochet Kingpin, is an author, playwright, and arts administrator for the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Dwayne has performed and hosted at many venues including The Kennedy Center, Woolly Mammoth Theater, Keegan Theater, The Strathmore, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, and Spit Dat DC. Crowned 2021 DMV “Male Poet of the Year,” ultimately, Dwayne’s goal is to invite folks to feel again. As a fiber artist, Dwayne has vended at many events and hosted workshops for esteemed entities including the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum and Words, Beats, and Life. 

Learn more about Spinning a Yarn and Dwayne on the blog

Alexa Patrick (she/her) is a vocalist and poet from Connecticut. She is the author of Remedies for Disappearing (Haymarket Books, 2023) and holds fellowships from Cave Canem, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and more. Previous artistic partnerships of Alexa’s include Meta, Microsoft, The Kennedy Center, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts. In spring 2023, Alexa made her stage production debut as Un/Sung in the opera We Shall Not Be Moved (dire. Bill T. Jones). You may find her work in publications including Adroit, The Rumpus, CRWN Magazine, and The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic.

RSVP HERE 

We are thrilled to have you join an intimate panel conversation during Purpose Tour 2025: Empowering Communities through Open Conversations in Washington, D.C., at Hill Prince on February 11, 2025. 

About the Conversation: Between Lines and Shadows 

A powerful conversation where writers and artists will explore how their creative work opens doors, daring us to imagine a new reality. This conversation will challenge us to confront what is, and what was, while exploring the stories that have been suppressed and giving voice to the narratives we've been searching for. In this intersection of art and history, we’ll take a journey to reclaim what we’ve forgotten. It is a call to disrupt, reflect, and reshape the narratives that shape us. 

About the Purpose Tour: Amplifying Voices Nationwide 

Washington, D.C., will be the first stop on the Purpose Tour, which will visit 11 cities, creating spaces for conversations that inspire sustainable change. Sessions will be recorded and shared across podcast platforms and YouTube to ensure a lasting impact beyond the event. 

By participating, you will help empower emerging leaders, foster connections across communities, and support the application launch for the $150K Black Justice Fellowship grant round, designed to uplift grassroots changemakers. 

PANELISTS 

● Adedayo Kosoko – Director/Photographer 

● Alexa Patrick – Author, Poet, Educator 

● Charles Philippe Jean-Pierre – Artist 

EVENT DETAILS 

● Date: Tuesday, February 11, 2025 

● Time: Doors open at 6:00 PM. The panel will be live taped. Please arrive no later than 7:00 PM to avoid interrupting the recording. 

● Location: Purpose Club - 1335 Linden Court NE (access through alley next to Atlas Theater). It is a speakeasy, so if you feel lost, you are in the right place. Look for the white door. 

● Parking: Street parking is available on Maryland Avenue and H Street, and there are nearby parking lots for your convenience: 

○ AirGarage parking lot – 1207 H St, NE [Link] 

○ Parking lot at 1000 H St, NE (Spots must be reserved through SpotHero or another parking app) ● Attire: Business Casual to Casual 

About GOODProjects 

GOODProjects is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering Black leaders and fostering social justice through initiatives that promote community engagement, youth leadership, and racial equity. We provide resources, mentorship, and platforms for emerging leaders to address systemic inequalities and create sustainable change in their communities. Through programs like the Black Justice Fellowship, Purpose Club, and other impactful initiatives, GOODProjects strives to amplify the voices of those working to make a difference in underserved communities across the nation. 

For more information, visit goodprojects.org or contact us at good@goodprojects.org.

Please join Alexa Patrick, E'mon Lauren, and Kush Thompson to celebrate the release of Patrick's new book Remedies for Disappearing!

https://pilsencommunitybooks.com/events/20240606

Split This Rock's Spring & Summer Writing Workshops 

In Collaboration with American Poetry Museum and If All The Trees Were Pens Open Mic 

Under 25 and near Washington, DC? Come through to the American Poetry Museum to get into the writing groove with our team of teaching artists for a free workshop each month, then register for the If All The Trees Were Pens Open Mic to share your poems with DC's vibrant intergenerational writing community!

From April through August 2024, Split This Rock is hosting a monthly youth writing workshop at the American Poetry Museum in Brookland, DC. Workshops are hosted on the last Wednesday of the month, 6-8pm, and are free to attend. Participate in dynamic writing workshops open to writers of all experience levels, beginner to advanced, led by our brilliant team of teaching artists who will support you in developing your unique voice and honing your craft. Learn more about each Teaching Artist below.

Workshops are free to attend, and free refreshments and masks will be provided. Check below for specific workshop dates and directions for getting to American Poetry Museum. For questions or accessibility requests, please reach out to chelsea@splitthisrock.org.

Workshops will be held on the following dates and times: 

• Wednesday, April 24, 2024, 6-8 pm

• Wednesday, May 29, 2024, 6-8 pm

• Wednesday, June 26, 2024, 6-8 pm

• Wednesday, July 31, 2024, 6-8 pm

• Wednesday, August 28, 2024, 6-8 pm

American Poetry Museum is located adjacent to the Brookland-CUA Metro on the Red Line. Street and garage parking are available. When you arrive, the American Poetry Museum is located on the north side of the Monroe Arts Walk that directly faces the Metro station. If arriving by Metro, you will pass underneath the Michigan Ave NE overpass and the venue is located directly behind the "Arts Walk" tower. If arriving from Monroe St NE, turn down the Arts Walk, passing Brookland Pint on the left and Tropical Smoothie on the right until you reach the end of the Arts Walk. Make the left turn and American Poetry Museum is the second space on the left.

Free refreshments and masks will be provided. We encourage all workshop attendees wear a mask to keep the space safe and accessible for all participants and as a practice of community care. An air purifier will be running during the workshop. Thank you for helping us hold safe space! 

ACCESSIBILITY

The venue is wheelchair accessible. Masks are required of all workshop attendees and an air purifier will be running during the workshops. To request accommodations, please send an email to chelsea@splitthisrock.org. Emails received 7-10 business days before the workshop date will give us our best opportunity to fulfill requests. 

Join us Thursday, April 18th at 6:30 pm for a night of poetry featuring Alexa Patrick and Karisma Price.

This event will be held in our upstairs event space and is free to attend.

Alexa Patrick is a poet and vocalist from Connecticut. She is a Cave Canem fellow and Tin House alumna. She has also been cast in the featured role of Unsung in We Shall Not Be Moved, an opera under the direction of Bill T. Jones. You may find Alexa’s work published in The Quarry, The Rumpus, CRWN Magazine, and The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic.

Purchase a Signed Copy of Remedies for Disappearing!

A collection of poetry that moves from family history and the heartbreaks of navigating a predominantly white high school into adulthood, exploring the ways the speaker’s experiences echo those of an expansive and intricate history of Black girls and women.
In this beautiful debut from an exciting new poet, Alexa Patrick’s Remedies for Disappearing memorializes Blackness in its quiet and unexpected forms, bringing the peripheral into focus. These poems muddy Black life and death, observe lineage and love stories, and question what “disappearing” teaches about Blackness and bodies.

Remedies for Disappearing is gritty, sharp, and formally inventive, demonstrating Patrick’s imaginative curiosity, lyrical restraint, and confidence in her handling of language. Moments of aphoristic confession are balanced with imagistic precision as the speaker recounts the ways her aunties, sisters, and even herself have disappeared in order to survive.

Patrick’s poetry is haunting and hopeful, striving to provide readers with the tools and context to acknowledge, define, and honor the complexity of Black girl/womanhood. Remedies for Disappearing connects Black girls and women to each other and to their own histories, and insists that they be fully and wholly seen.

Karisma Price is an assistant professor of English at Tulane University. A poet, screenwriter, and media artist, she is the author of I’m Always So Serious (Sarabande Books, 2023). Her work has appeared in publications including Poetry, Indiana Review, Oxford American, Four Way Review, Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day Series, and elsewhere. She is a Cave Canem Fellow, was a finalist for the 2019 Manchester Poetry Prize, was awarded the 2020 J. Howard and Barbara M. J. Wood Prize from the Poetry Foundation, and is the 2023 winner of the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from the American Poetry Review. A native New Orleanian, she holds an MFA in poetry from New York University, where she was a Writers in the Public Schools Fellow.

Purchase a Signed Copy of I’m Always So Serious!

“I’m Always so Serious is brilliant.” –Terrance Hayes, winner of the National Book Award for Lighthead
Karisma Price’s stunning debut collection is an extended
meditation on Blackness, on family, on loss. Anchored in New Orleans and New
York City, these poems braid personal and public histories into a cultural
reckoning of past and present. James Booker speaks to Ringo Starr, a phone “Autocorrects
‘Nigga’ to Night, ‘” If Beale Street
Could Talk is recast with characters from The Odyssey. In these pages there is grief, there is absence, there
is violence–“We
know that mostly everything around us / is measured in blood.”–but there is
also immense love and truth. Karisma Price has created a serious masterpiece, a
book “so dark you have no other option but to call it / precious.”

Alexa will be the guest poet at Xavier University of Louisiana. This event will include Alexa reading from her debut poetry collection Remedies for Disappearing, a Q+A, and a reception to follow.

Conversations and Connections is a one-day writer's conference that brings together writers, editors, and publishers in a friendly, supportive environment. The conference is organized by Barrelhouse magazine, and has been held for the past 15 years in Washington DC, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia. The April 2024 conference is our 25th Conversations and Connections. All proceeds go to participating small presses and literary magazines, and to Barrelhouse. Learn more here.

Featured Authors Include:

Alexa Patrick (she/her) is a vocalist and poet from Connecticut. She is the author of Remedies for Disappearing (Haymarket Books, 2023) and holds fellowships from Cave Canem, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and more. Previous artistic partnerships of Alexa’s include Meta, Microsoft, the National Museum of Women in the Arts. In spring 2023, Alexa made her stage production debut as Un/Sung in the opera We Shall Not Be Moved, (dire. Bill T. Jones). You may find her work in publications including Adroit, CRWN Magazine, and The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic. Visit alexapatrick.com for more.

Susan Muaddi Darraj is an award-winning writer of books for adults and children. She won an American Book Award, two Arab American Book Awards, and a Maryland State Arts Council Independent Artists Award. In 2018, she was named a USA Artists Ford Fellow. Her books include her linked short story collection, A Curious Land, as well as the Farah Rocks children’s book series. She lives in Baltimore, where she teaches creative writing at Harford Community College and the Johns Hopkins University. Her new novel, BEHIND YOU IS THE SEA, was published in January 2024 by HarperVia. It received praise from The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Ms Magazine, and it was named a Best Book of 2024 by The New Yorker and Apple Books.

Hannah Grieco is a writer, editor, and adjunct writing professor in Washington, DC. She edits novels and prose collections at the local independent press Alan Squire Publishing, where her recent anthology “Already Gone: 40 Stories of Running Away” was released in November of 2023. Her own writing can be found in The Washington Post, The Independent, Al Jazeera, Brevity, Craft Literary, Poet Lore, Shenandoah, Fairy Tale Review, and more. Find her online at www.hgrieco.com and on most social media @writesloud.

Sheila Squillante is a writer and visual artist living in Pittsburgh. She is the author of the poetry collections, Mostly Human, winner of the 2020 Wicked Woman Book Prize from Brick House Books, and Beautiful Nerve, as well as four chapbooks of poetry: Dear Sunder, In This Dream of My Father, Women Who Pawn Their Jewelry and A Woman Traces the Shoreline. Her New and Selected is forthcoming from Braddock Avenue Books in 2025. Her debut essay collection, All Things Edible, Random and Odd: Essays on Grief, Love and Food, was published by CLASH Books in November, 2023. She is also co-author, along with Sandra L. Faulkner, of the writing craft book, Writing the Personal: Getting Your Stories Onto the Page.

OPENING FESTIVAL SESSION
Praising the Mouth That Speaks: A spine for the world to listen. Turn up the volume.
Chesapeake Shakespeare Company
7 S Calvert Street
Baltimore, MD 21202

PARKING
Garages:
The Lombard Garage lot (204 East Lombard Street, Baltimore, 21202) or
Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace Hotel Parking (202 East Pratt Street, Baltimore, MD, 21202)
Street Parking:
On weekends and evenings, the meters are in effect on the main streets; read the meter and posted signs carefully. Most meters accept change ($2 an hour) or credit cards.

______________

FEATURED POET: MAHOGANY L. BROWNE
MUSICAL ARTIST: BLACK ASSETS
Reception to follow.

______________

The 21st CityLit Festival arrives this year with poetry at the center of the launch with this year’s theme, Dismantling the Culture of Literature. CityLit features performance poet, curator, MAHOGANY L. BROWNE, musical artist BLACK ASSETS, and an assembly of poets.The start of the three-day festival returns to Chesapeake Shakespeare Company for an evening of poetry, music, and connection. In the past, this standing-room-only event served as a finale but this year’s gathering begs for poets to reflect on the reality of this moment, where listening becomes a way of being. Mahogany’s recent works include Vinyl Moon, Chlorine Sky (optioned for Steppenwolf Theater), Black Girl Magic, and banned books: Woke: A Young Poets Call to Justice, and Woke Baby. She’s the Executive Director of JustMedia, an initiative designed to support the groundwork of criminal justice leaders and community members through an open-access archive. Queen of the soulful bounce, Ashley Lakayla Yates, aka Black Assets, originally from Itta Bena, Mississippi, is a Baltimore treasure. This queer international recording artist leaves you with an unforgettable musical experience.

Featured artists will be joined by the following creatives:
A’niya Taylor is a Spoken word artist, community advocate, and Baltimore’s (2022-23) Youth Poet Laureate. Through her poetry, she aims to highlight the intersection between art, individual healing, and community healing. Wordsmith is a proliferate creator in the world of performance, including songwriter, poet, actor, and playwright. He is an artistic partner with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and was selected by the Baltimore Sun as one of 25 Black Marylanders to watch in 2024. Nancy Murray is a poet, memoirist, playwright, and storyteller, who recently published her first collection of poetry, The Colors of Fear. Ryan Jafar Artes (he/she/they) is an activist, memoirist, and poet whose work calls for a re-imagination of culture via cultural renaissance from the perspective of lived experience as a transracial transnational South Asian Indian American adoptee. Poet and editor Matt Hohner has an international reach. In his new collection, At the Edge of a Thousand Years, winner of the 2023 Jacar Press Poetry Book Contest, poet Carolyn Forche, says “This is a poet unafraid of risk…” Amazon Kindle best-selling author Dr. Latorial Faison from Virginia, is the powerhouse author of over a dozen poetry books. She is well known for her poem, “What is Black History?” Vocalist and Cave Canem fellow Alexa Patrick, with a poetry collection called Remedies for Disappearing, whose stage production debut as Un/Sung in the opera We Shall Not Be Moved was directed by Bill T. Jones, will moderate. A reception will follow. Spirits will flow.

Learn more here

Join the Love Your Magic Annual Conference where these five inspirational women will ignite the spirit of nurturing justice and joy for Black and Brown girls.

1. Jeneé Osterheldt @sincerely.jenee
2. Lynae Vanee  @lynaevanee
3. Alexa Patrick   @alexalaurel
4. Sophia Yeshi @yeshidesigns
5. DJ Slick Vick  @dj_slickvick

In this specially crafted space, they’ll share wisdom, foster self-love, and empower attendees to embrace their beauty and power while resisting respectability politics. It’s a community-driven gathering designed to uplift, advocate, and lead with love.

April 6  8:30 am - 2:00 pm
The Foundry

Register: join.loveyourmagic.org/conference

In this energizing event, writer and vocalist Alexa Patrick will perform poems from her debut collection Remedies for Disappearing (Haymarket Books 2023), and share the complicated stories around Black girlhood that inspired them. If you have wild aunties, if you have or haven't gone to a prom, if you have ever been 'the only" in a place where you so desperately wanted to be seen--this event is for you. Q+A and book signing to follow. 

ABOUT REMEDIES FOR DISAPPEARING

A collection of poetry that moves from family history and the heartbreaks of navigating a predominantly white high school into adulthood, exploring the ways the speaker’s experiences echo those of an expansive and intricate history of Black girls and women.

In this beautiful debut from an exciting new poet, Alexa Patrick’s Remedies for Disappearing memorializes Blackness in its quiet and unexpected forms, bringing the peripheral into focus. These poems muddy Black life and death, observe lineage and love stories, and question what “disappearing” teaches about Blackness and bodies.

All are also warmly invited to attend Germantown Athenaeum’s third annual virtual Open Mic on Thursday, February 29, 12:30-1:30, via Zoom

Second Wind Poetry is a curated open mic with a purpose to reenergize everyone involved. Through powerful voices both new and familiar, and an exciting featured poet, Second Wind Poetry Night is sure to leave you feeling inspired, prepared, and hopeful for what’s ahead!

Online advance reservations for a given performance date will open on a rolling basis, opening every Wednesday two weeks out from the date.

RSVP HERE (Registration opens on February 7, 2024)

On Monday, February 12th at 8pm, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and Spit Dat bring you this month’s open mic featuring Queen Cain and Alexa Patrick! Add to the energy as an audience member or share your own talents on the mic. Hosted by Drew Anderson with special guest host Rebecca Dupas! (641 D St NW DC)

SPIT DAT is the longest-running open mic in the nation’s capital. A profoundly intimate artistic and spiritual experience which has fought to remain a safe space through nearly two decades of societal changes, Spit Dat combines world-class talent with a living room vibe. As much a “venue” as it is an “event”, Spit Dat has won multiple awards for its contribution to the growth of generations of acclaimed international artists. But perhaps its most valued accolade lives in being renowned among its staunch community as no less than “Church.”

February Open-Mic Sign-Up

Thanks to Mayor Bowser and the Mayor’s Office on African American Affairs for their support of Spit Dat.

Readers:

George Abraham 
Breezy
José Olivarez
Alexa Patrick
Maya Marshall
Dan “Sully” Sullivan

For two hours, audiences can expect a diverse chorus of voices, and a vast array of professional spoken word performers, open mic rookies, musicians and a different host every week. Expect to be moved, expect a packed house, expect the unexpected, but above all come with an open mind and ear.

$8 cover. Wristbands are available for purchase online at midnight and in the restaurant starting at 10:00 AM. No refunds. Ticket purchase limit of 4 per person. Guests must have their wristbands (tickets) on upon entering the event.

Seating is available on a first come, first seated basis. No saved or reserved seats are allowed. Failure to check in within 30 minutes of advertised start time may result in forfeiture of seats. Sorry, no refunds.

ABOUT THE FEATURE:

Anthony (Tony) Keith Jr., PhD. is a Black American gay poet, spoken word artist, and Hip-Hop educational leader from Washington DC. Or, you can just call him an “Ed Emcee”. He is author of the young adult memoir in verse, How the Boogeyman Became a Poet and the young adult poetry collection Knucklehead (Forthcoming) from Katherine Tegen Books at HarpersCollins. Tony’s writings appear in the Journal of Negro Education, Equity & Excellence in Education, the Journal of Black Masculinity and many others. Some of his featured performances include John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington National Cathedral, the Historic Lincoln Theatre, and the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg South Africa. A multi-year fellow of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and HumanitiesDC, Tony is CEO of Ed Emcee Academy and lives with his husband, Harry Christian III in his DC hometown.

Register and learn more about the event HERE

We look forward to celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday with this annual free and family-friendly event featuring contemporary poets and actors reading historic speeches from King, Frederick Douglass, Fannie Lou Hamer, and others.

This Folger Shakespeare Library Poetry program was created in 2006.  Previous readers include: Jericho Brown, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Julian Randall, Joseph Ross, Melanie Henderson, DeMaris Hill, and more.

Support Food Pantry Recommendations from “Not Just Another Day Off”:

• World Central Kitchen

• Lutheran Church of the Reformation.

• Server Your City DC

• Manna Food Center (Montgomery County)

For two hours, audiences can expect a diverse chorus of voices, and a vast array of professional spoken word performers, open mic rookies, musicians and a different host every week. Expect to be moved, expect a packed house, expect the unexpected, but above all come with an open mind and ear.

$8 cover. Wristbands are available for purchase online at midnight and in the restaurant starting at 10:00 AM. No refunds. Ticket purchase limit of 4 per person. Guests must have their wristbands (tickets) on upon entering the event.

Seating is available on a first come, first seated basis. No saved or reserved seats are allowed. Failure to check in within 30 minutes of advertised start time may result in forfeiture of seats. Sorry, no refunds.

ABOUT THE FEATURE:

Born in Puerto Rico, Tatiana Figueroa Ramírez has received fellowships from VONA Voices and Anaphora Arts, having worked with Willie Perdomo and Danez Smith. Tatiana currently performs, facilitates workshops, and hosts events in the DC area, having previously done so across the United States and the Dominican Republic at venues including The Kennedy Center and New York University. Her work has been featured in MSNBC’s “Leguizamo Does America” and The Acentos Review, among other publications. Tatiana is the author of Coconut Curls y Café con Leche (2019) and Despojo (2020).

Courtney LeBlanc is the author of the full-length collections Her Whole Bright Life; Exquisite Bloody, Beating Heart; and Beautiful & Full of Monsters. She is the Arlington County Poet Laureate, a Virginia Center for Creative Arts fellow, and the founder and editor-in-chief of Riot in Your Throat, an independent poetry press.

Alexa Patrick is a vocalist and poet from Connecticut. She holds fellowships from Cave Canem, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and more. Alexa is currently the Programs Director for Shout Mouse Press. In spring 2023, Alexa made her stage production debut as Un/Sung in the opera We Shall Not Be Moved, directed by Kennedy Center honors awardee Bill T. Jones. You may find her work in publications including The Adroit Journal, CRWN Magazine, and The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic. Her debut collection Remedies for Disappearing will be published by Haymarket Books in June.

RSVP HERE

Event description: Brought to you by poet and performer Alexa Patrick, and DC-based clothing brand CHRiS CARDi, FRIENDSGIVING is a poetry reading and clothing pop-up shop centered around gratitude. This event will also include a Q+A, book signing, and light refreshments. (Put this in purple because I'm not sure if this is allowed. Please let me know). 

Alexa Patrick (she/her) is a vocalist and poet from Connecticut. She is the author of Remedies for Disappearing (Haymarket Books 2023) and holds fellowships from Cave Canem, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and more. In spring 2023, Alexa made her stage production debut as Un/Sung in the opera We Shall Not Be Moved, (dire. Bill T. Jones). You may find her work in publications including Adroit, CRWN Magazine, and The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic. Visit alexapatrick.com for more.

Rasheed Copeland is a native of Washington, DC. He is the author of The Book of Silence: Manhood as a Pseudoscience (Sergeant Press, 2015) and is a multiple recipient of the DC Commission of the Arts and Humanities Fellowship Award. He has performed and facilitated writing workshops across the country and internationally. His work has been featured in online publications such as Poets.org, Split This Rock, and the Crab Orchard Review.

Taylor Johnson is from Washington, DC. He is the author of Inheritance (Alice James Books, 2020), winner of the 2021 Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. His work appears in Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, The Baffler, Scalawag, and elsewhere. Johnson is a Cave Canem graduate fellow and a recipient of the 2017 Larry Neal Writers’ Award from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and the 2021 Judith A. Markowitz Award for Emerging Writers from Lambda Literary. Taylor was the inaugural 2022 Poet-in-Residence at the Guggenheim Museum. He is the Poet Laureate of Takoma Park, Maryland. With his wife, Elizabeth Bryant, Taylor curates the Green Way Reading Series at People’s Book in Takoma Park.

Kenny Carroll is a writer from DC. He was the 2017 DC Youth Poet Laureate, and in 2019 received the Thomas Lux Scholarship from Sarah Lawrence. His work has been featured in Split This Rock’s The Quarry, EcoTheo Review, Lampblack, and Beltway Quarterly, among others. He is a Watering Hole, Brooklyn Poets, and Obsidian fellow. And a 2023 Cave Canem Starshine and Clay fellow. You can find him online @Kennyc113.

For two hours, audiences can expect a diverse chorus of voices, and a vast array of professional spoken word performers, open mic rookies, musicians and a different host every week. Expect to be moved, expect a packed house, expect the unexpected, but above all come with an open mind and ear.

$8 cover. Wristbands are available for purchase online at midnight and in the restaurant starting at 10:00 AM. No refunds. Ticket purchase limit of 4 per person. Guests must have their wristbands (tickets) on upon entering the event.

Seating is available on a first come, first seated basis. No saved or reserved seats are allowed. Failure to check in within 30 minutes of advertised start time may result in forfeiture of seats. Sorry, no refunds.

ABOUT THE FEATURE:

Derrick Weston Brown holds an MFA in Creative Writing from American University. He is the founding Poet-In-Residence of Busboys and Poets. He is a graduate of the Cave Canem and VONA summer workshops and is a participating author in the PEN-Faulkner Foundation’s Writers-In-Schools-Program. His work has been published and featured in such print journals and online publications as, Racebaitr, Colorlines and Bayou Magazine.  His debut collection of poetry, Wisdom Teeth was released in 2011 through PM Press/Busboys and Poets Press. His second collection of poetry, a chapbook entitled On All Fronts  was released  along with two other poetry chapbooks in a bound series from Upper Rubber Boot Press entitled Floodgates Vol.5 , March of 2019  He resides in PG County. He was an adjunct professor of English at Prince George’s Community College in Largo MD and is currently full-time faculty of the Cinematic Arts & Media Production (CAMP) at The Duke Ellington School of the Arts. You can follow him on social media on Facebook, Instagram @theoriginalDerrickWestonBrown or through DerrickWestonBrown.com