Join us for the Lampblack Reading Series on Friday, October 20th at The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA) located at 80 Hanson Pl, Brooklyn, NY, 11217.

Featuring India Lena González, Jared Jackson, and Ama Codjoe!

This event is free and open to the public. Limited seating (*priority will be given to people with disabilities). Cash donations accepted on-site. Online donations accepted here. All proceeds from the Lampblack Reading Series support the Lampblack Literary Foundation’s direct aid program.

Wine & beer reception will begin at 6 PM and readings will begin at 6:30PM.

Advance online ticketing will end at 2 PM (ET) on the day of the event. After that, in-person guests will be admitted at the door if capacity remains. In-person guests are encouraged to get a ticket in advance.

About the Authors

India Lena González is a poet, editor, and multidisciplinary artist. She received her BA from Columbia University  and her MFA from NYU’s Creative Writing program. Her debut poetry collection, fox woman get out!, is forthcoming from BOA Editions in September 2023 as part of Blessing the Boats Selections. India is also a professionally trained dancer, choreographer, and actor. She lives in Harlem.

Jared Jackson is a writer, editor, educator, and arts administrator born in Hartford, CT. He received an MFA in fiction from Columbia University, where he was the recipient of a Chair’s Fellowship and Creative Writing Teaching Fellowship. He has been awarded residencies and fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Center for Fiction, Baldwin for the Arts, Tin House, and Plympton’s Writing Downtown Residency. His writing has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Yale Review, Guernica, Kenyon Review, n+1, and elsewhere. His short story “Bebo” was anthologized in Best American Short Stories 2023, guest edited by Min Jin Lee. He is at work on a story collection titled Locals.

Ama Codjoe is the author of Bluest Nude (Milkweed Editions, 2022), finalist for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry and the Paterson Poetry Prize, and Blood of the Air (Northwestern University Press, 2020), winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. She has been awarded support from Bogliasco, Cave Canem, Robert Rauschenberg, and Saltonstall foundations as well as from Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Hedgebrook, Yaddo, Hawthornden, MacDowell, and the Amy Clampitt Residency. Her poems have twice appeared in the Best American Poetry series. Among other honors, Codjoe has received fellowships from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bronx Council on the Arts, the New York State Council/New York Foundation of the Arts, and the Jerome Foundation. Codjoe is the 2023 Poet-in-Residence at the Guggenheim Museum. She is the winner of a 2023 Whiting Award.