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Word is Bond: Sudan Benefit Reading
April 28 @ 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Join us at 144 Montague or online via Zoom for an evening of poetry in solidarity with & support of Sudan including an open mic and featured readings by Dalia Elhassan, Hafizah Geter, Melissa Lozada-Oliva and Ladan Osman, hosted and curated by Amina Iro. All proceeds will be donated to the Sudanese American Physicians Association (SAPA) to support their urgent, critical work in response to the current violence & devastation in Sudan.
6:00 PM: doors open & open mic sign-up begins
6:30 to 7:15 PM: open mic
7:30 to 8:30 PM: readings by Dalia Elhassan, Hafizah Geter, Melissa Lozada-Oliva and Ladan Osman
Each reader for the open mic can read one poem for up to a three-minute set. All participants who’d like to read for the open mic must sign up at the door on a first-come, first-serve basis. There will be time for about 12–15 readers.
Registration is a sliding scale donation, please pay what you can. Advance online registration for in-person attendance will end at 5 PM on the day of the event. After that, tickets for in-person attendance can be purchased at the door until we reach capacity; tickets for virtual attendance will be available until the start of the readings at 6:30 PM. A Zoom link will be emailed to all ticket holders. Closed captions will be available for the event through the Zoom livestream. For more information and to request additional accommodations, contact us at bkp@brooklynpoets.org. Note that by participating, you agree to abide by our code of conduct and COVID-19 policy. All in-person attendees are required to wear masks (regardless of vaccination status) except readers at a safe distance on stage, and we will have masks available. Brooklyn Poets reserves the right to dismiss from our programs any participant found to be in violation of these policies. Thank you for respecting our community. Sudanese poets & writers can email bkp@brooklynpoets.org to be added to the attendee list for free — please note if you’d like to attend virtually or in person.
About the series
This reading marks the beginning of a new life for Word is Bond, a community-centered reading series originally founded and directed by Anthony Thomas Lombardi in 2020. In its initial run, WiB hosted virtual readings on Zoom during COVID-19 quarantine to raise funds for mutual aid organizations, transnational relief efforts and bail funds.
Word is Bond was created to harness solidarity and camaraderie among our communities, emphasizing horizontal power structures and mutual aid, and, to paraphrase Bertolt Brecht, “sing during the dark times about the dark times.” We’re excited to reboot this necessary series at Brooklyn Poets, with r kay joining Lombardi as co-director.
Previous partners and sponsors include the Adroit Journal, Gulf Coast and the Asian American Writers Workshop. Previously featured poets include Kaveh Akbar, Ross Gay, Hanif Abdurraqib, Mahogany L. Browne, Megan Fernandes, Victoria Chang, Hala Alyan and Shira Erlichman. WiB readings have raised thousands of dollars in service of the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund, Community Justice Exchange’s Emergency Bail Fund and Henry Street Settlement, among others.
Featured readers
Dalia Elhassan is a Sudanese-American poet and writer based in NYC. Her work is forthcoming in the Michigan Quarterly Review and has been featured in the Kenyon Review, SUNU Journal and most recently in the New-Generation African Poets Series (Sita) with her chapbook, In Half Light (2019, Akashic Books & African Poetry Book Fund). She is a recipient of the Hajja Razia Sharif Sheikh Prize for nonfiction and was shortlisted for the 2018 Brunel International African Poetry Prize. She can be found online @daliaelhassan.
Hafizah Augustus Geter is a Nigerian-American writer born in Zaria, Nigeria, and raised in Akron, Ohio, and Columbia, South Carolina. Her debut memoir, The Black Period: On Personhood, Race, and Origin (Random House, 2022), is a New Yorker Magazine Best Book of 2022, a Good Morning America Anticipated Book, an Amazon’s Best of the Month Editor’s Pick, a finalist for a 2023 Lambda Literary Award and the winner of the 2023 PEN Open Book Award. She is the author of the poetry collection Un-American (Wesleyan University Press, 2020), an NAACP Image Award and PEN Open Book Award finalist. Her writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Bomb, Boston Review, the Believer, the Paris Review, the Funambulist and Harper’s Bazaar, among other places. She is a literary agent at Janklow & Nesbit and lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Melissa Lozada-Oliva is the author of Peluda, Dreaming of You and Candelaria, which was named one of the best books of 2023 by Vogue and USA Today. She teaches writing workshops and works as a barista in Brooklyn.
Ladan Osman is the author of Exiles of Eden (2019), winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and a Whiting Award, and The Kitchen-Dweller’s Testimony (2015), winner of the Sillerman Prize. Her work in film includes: The Ascendants, Just Sam, and Sun of the Soil. Ladan lives in New York.
Hosted and curated by Amina Iro
Amina Iro is a poet, crochet artist and book editor. A writer and performance poet originally from Prince George’s County, MD, Amina has held fellowships with the Watering Hole, Hurston/Wright Foundation, and Pink Door. She has performed at venues in the US, England, Nigeria, and South Africa. Amina is a graduate of the First Wave program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she studied Neurobiology and English Creative Writing. Her work is published in Reginald and Beltway Quarterly Poetry.