A Birthday Celebration of Audre Lorde
February 18 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Worship the Lorde! Join us for a celebration of the inimitable Audre Lorde (1934 – 1992), a self-described “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” on February 18, her birthday. Poets JP Howard, I.S. Jones, Zora Satchell, and Brad Walrond will read favorite poems or passages by Lorde alongside their own work, celebrating her visionary influence on their lives and work. Hosted and curated by Anastacia–Reneé.
“For there are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt,” Audre Lorde in “Poetry is Not a Luxury.” Photo by Elsa Dorfman.
Readings in Kray Hall followed by a reception in the Reading Room.
About the Poets:
Anastacia-Reneé is an award-winning cross-genre queer writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, TEDX speaker and former Seattle Civic Poet. She is the author of Side Notes from the Archivist, (v.), and Forget It. Her mixed media art has been exhibited at the Fry Art Museum and her installation, “Don’t Be Absurd (Alice in Parts),” was chosen by NBC as one of the “Queer Artist of Color Must See LGBTQ Arts Shows.” She has received fellowships and residencies from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, VONA, Artist Trust, Ragdale, Mineral School and others. Reneé’s poetry, fiction and nonfiction has been anthologized and published widely. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
JP Howard is a poet, educator, literary activist, and community builder. Her debut poetry collection, SAY/MIRROR (The Operating System), was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. She is also the author of bury your love poems here (Belladonna*), Praise This Complicated Herstory: Legacy, Healing & Revolutionary Poems (Harlequin Creature) and co-editor of Sinister Wisdom Journal Black Lesbians–We Are the Revolution! JP is a featured Lesbian Poet Trading Card (Headmistress Press). JP was a Brooklyn College Tow Mentor-in-Residence. She has received fellowships and/or grants from Cave Canem, VONA, Lambda Literary, and Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC). She curates Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon. JP’s poetry and/or essays have been featured in POETRY Magazine, The New York Times, The Slowdown, The Academy of American Poets, Split this Rock, and elsewhere. JP is a Poetry Editor for Women’s Studies Quarterly and Editor-At-Large of Mom Egg Review VOX online. http://www.jp-howard.com
I.S. Jones is an American / Nigerian poet and editor. She is a senior editor for Poetry Northwest where she runs her column, The Legacy Suite, a three-part interview documenting the journey of writers publishing their debut poetry collections. She is the 2024-2025 Artist-In-Resident at Northwestern University with the Black Arts Consortium. Her full length collection Bloodmercy was chosen by Nicole Sealey as the 2025 winner of the APR / Honickman first book prize.
Zora Satchel is a Black and Chinese American queer poet, editor, and cinephile who writes about food, sex, film, family, and friendship. Her work has been published with Honey Literary, Drunk Monkeys Magazine, Stone of Madness Press and elsewhere. She was In Surreal Life, Emotional Historians Fellow for the summer of 2024, as well as the 2021 Winter/Spring Brooklyn Poets Fellow. She’s previously served as an assistant editor for Kissing Dynamite Magazine from 2020-21 and is also a founding member of the Estuary Collective which provides workshops for non academic Black poets. She has led editing workshops such as “Cut & Slash” as well as her poetry in cinema generative workshop series ”Stranded at the Drive in”. She has led workshops for both Brooklyn Poets and The Free Black Women’s Library. They holds a degree in Ethnic Studies from Colorado State University and when she is not writing she is performing all around NYC with Brooklyn Poets, Blasian March, KGB Bar, Priyo, Glow in the City: Unplugged and elsewhere. When not writing, she is marathoning movies. She lives on the border of Brooklyn and Queens
Brad Walrond is a poet, author, performance artist, and one of the foremost writers and performers of the 1990s Black Arts Movement centered in New York City. Walrond’s debut collection, Every Where Alien, (2024 Moore Black Press | Amistad / HarperCollins), is a portrait of the author’s own Black queer exploration of the world, amidst the discovery of 1990s-early 2000s New York City underground art and resistance movements. Communities like the House Ballroom scene, New Black Arts Movement, Black Rock Coalition, HIV/AIDS Black queer artivist community, and the underground house dance and music scene. Brad’s poems have been published in: The Atlantic, Poem-A-Day | Academy of American Poets, African Voices Magazine, Wordpeace, About Place Journal, and elsewhere. Walrond holds a B.A. from The City College of New York and an M.A. from Columbia University.