Women Writers of the Diaspora presents JP Howard...

Thursday, October 15, 6:00-7:30 pm

Calabar Imports Harlem

2504 Frederick Douglass Blvd. (at 134^th St.)

Harlem, NY 10030

JP Howard, aka Juliet P. Howard will read and  dicuss poetry from her debut collection, SAY/MIRROR (The Operating System, 2015) and will present a mini-exhibit of some of vintage 1940s-1950s photos of her mother, one of the first black high-fashion models. 

JP is a Cave Canem graduate fellow and , author of SAY/MIRROR, a debut poetry collection published by The Operating currator of  Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon (WWBPS), a forum that celebrates a diverse array of women poets and includes a large LGBTQ POC membership.  She thrives on collaboration and community and believes her salon has blossomed due to enormous support from community.  She is an alum of the VONA/Voices Writers Workshop, as well as a Lambda Literary Foundation Emerging LGBT Voices Fellow, and was a finalist in The Feminist Wire’s 2014 1st Poetry Contest. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Feminist Wire, Split this Rock, Nepantla: A Journal for Queer Poets of Color, Muzzle Magazine, Adrienne: A Poetry Journal of Queer Women, The Best American Poetry Blog, MiPOesias, The Mom Egg, Talking Writing and Connotation Press. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the City College of New York and a BA from Barnard College.  Join us for a great evening with Juliet P. Howard!

Women Writers of the Diaspora has a great lineup for the rest of the year: Mark your calendars for Eartha Watts-Hicks, November 5, Lorraine Currelley, November 19, Keisha-Gaye Anderson December 3, and Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa, December 17.   We also have an exciting lineup for 2016, so please be sure to follow my blog at http://womenwritersofdiaspora.blogspot.com/.

Women Writers of the Diaspora is a reading/discussion series created and moderated by Dr. Celesti Colds Fechter, Exec. Director of Education Success Services and Prof., Org. Behavior, King Graduate School, New Rochelle.  Women Writers of the Diaspora features poetry, prose, memoir, essay, reportage, urban writing by African and African Diasporan women.

The venue, Calabar Imports Harlem, is provided by Atim Otun, and the series is co-sponsored by Mosaic Literary Magazine.  

Space is limited.  Please RSVP at womenwritersofdiaspora@gmail.com

Women Writers of the Diaspora

CHERYL BOYCE-TAYLOR

Thursday, October 1, 6:00-7:30 pm

Calabar Imports Harlem

2504 Frederick Douglass Blvd. (at 134^th St.)

Harlem, NY 10030

Cheryl Boyce-Taylor is the Founder of The Calypso Muse Poetry Series. A poet and teaching artist, she creates community through poetry. Trinidad-born and Queens-bred, Cheryl Boyce Taylor is a poet, visual and teaching artist. The author of two collections of poetry, Raw Air and Night When Moon Follows, and recipient of the Partners in Writing Grant, Boyce-Taylor served as Poet in Residence during the 2003 season at the Caribbean Literary and Cultural Center in Brooklyn. Her poems have been anthologized in various publications including, including Def Poetry Jam's Bum Rush The Page, Poetry Nation, Rogue's Scholar, In Defense of Mumia, Bloom, Catch the Fire, Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café, and upcoming in 2004 in The Paterson Literary Review, and Bullets and Butterflies. Boyce-Taylor holds Masters degrees in both Education, and Social Work, and is in private practice as a writing release and personal self care therapist.

Women Writers of the Diaspora, is a 13-year old reading/discussion series created and moderated by Dr. Celesti Colds Fechter, Prof. of Org. Behavior at King Graduate School in New Rochelle, NY, and Owner/Exec. Director of Education Success Services, LLC. The series provides a forum for writing--prose, poetry, memoir, reportage, essay, urban--by and about women of African and African Diasporan descent.  

Women Writers of the Diaspora has a great lineup for the rest of the year: Mark your calendars for JP Howard, October 15; Eartha Watts-Hicks, November 5; Lorraine Currelley, November 19;Keisha-Gaye Anderson December 3; and Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa, December 17.   We also have an exciting lineup for 2016, so please be sure to follow my blog at http://womenwritersofdiaspora.blogspot.com/.

The venue, Calabar Imports Harlem, is provided by Atim Otun, and the series is co-sponsored by Mosaic Literary Magazine.  

Space is limited.  Please RSVP at womenwritersofdiaspora@gmail.com

Women Writers of the Diaspora presents Jacqueline Johnson

Women Writers of the Diaspora

Presents JACQUELINE JOHNSON

Thursday, September 17, 6:00-7:30 pm

Calabar Imports Harlem

2504 Frederick Douglass Blvd. (at 134^th St.)

Harlem, NY 10030

Jacqueline Johnson,  award-winning author of A Woman’s Season (Main Street Rag) and A Gathering of Mother Tongues (White Pine Press), will read and discuss her writings at Calabar Imports Harlem (corner of 134^th Street & Frederick Douglass Blvd). 

Ms. Johnson is a Cave Canem fellow and winner of the Third Annual White Pine Press Poetry Award.  She has also received awards from the New York Foundation of the Arts, the Mid-Atlantic Writers Association, and the MacDowell Colony for the Arts. She has taught poetry at Pine Manor College, Poets House, Very Special Arts, Imani House, the Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center, and African Voices.   

She has been published by Word Peace Journal, The Wide Shore: A Journal of Global Women’s Poetry; Fifth Wednesday Journal; Black Renaissance Noir; pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture, “Cutting Down the Wrath Bearing Tree,” Callaloo: The Politics Issue; Johns Hopkins Press; Tempu Tupu, African American Women’s Poetry; African World Press; Saints of Hysteria: A Half Century of Collaborative American Poetry; Softskull Press; Streetlight: Illuminating Tale of the Urban Black Experience, and Viking Penguin.

She has previously read at Pratt Institute, Poetry Society of America, Creative Time, NuYorican Poets Café, New York University, Studio Museum in Harlem, Metropolitan Museum, and the Pan African Literary Forum in Accra, Ghana.

Ms. Johnson, a native Philadelphian who now resides in Brooklyn, is a graduate of New York University and the City University of New York.  She is currently working on a novel, The Privilege of Memory, and a collection of short stories, Songs of Ikari.

Women Writers of the Diaspora, created and moderated by Celesti Colds Fechter, Owner/Exec. Director of Education Success Services, is a 13-year-old series that highlights writing by African and African Diasporan women.  

Space is limited.  Please RSVP at womenwritersofdiaspora@gmail.com

Summer is nearly over, so I’m taking this time to make an announcement.  Many of you know that I conceived, curated, and moderated a reading/discussion series called Women Writers of the Diaspora, which ran continuously for a decade. My idea for the series was to create a space to celebrate the fast-growing body of writing by African and African-diasporan women (African-American, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latina, Afro-European, Afro-Asian, and continental African).

I am thrilled to be able to say that, thanks to the extraordinary friendship and generosity of former associate chair at The New School’s Parson School of Design, Atim Anette Oton, the series will be re-born in Harlem--a renaissance if you will (pun intended)--on September 17, 2015, at her recently-opened Calabar Import Store at the corner of 134th Street & Frederick Douglass Blvd. in Harlem, NY. 

I owe a great deal of thanks to New School folks.  While I personally reached out to most of the 

series’ participants, it was Professor Elaine Savory who got the ball rolling by putting me in touch with Opal Palmer Adisa and Ifeona Fulani, the two authors featured in the series' inaugural program, and I want to give a shout out to Caroline Berger, former assistant director of The New School Bachelor’s Program and Thelma Armstrong, executive assistant in the dean’s office at The New School for General Studies for their author suggestions. At least five of the featured writers were/are connected with The New School either as either instructors, administrators or students. 

Past writers featured in the series include Opal Palmer Adisa, Keisha-Gaye Anderson, Esther Armah, Jacqueline Bishop, Pamela Booker, Merle Collins, Carole Boyce Davies, Bridget Davis, LaTasha Diggs, Kim Coleman Foote, Ifeona Fulani, Monica Hand, Juliet P. Howard, Linda Susan Jackson, Pamela Jackson, Jacqueline Johnson, Tayari Jones, Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa, Cynthia Mannick, Diana McCaulay, Rosalind McLymont, Pam Mordecai, Elizabeth Nunez, Ebele Oseye, Dolen Perkins-Valdez, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Cecily Rodway, Gammy Singer, Danyel Smith, Patricia Smith, Martha Southgate, Patricia Spears-Jones, Mecca Jamilah Sulivan, Eisa Ulen, and Tiphanie Yanique. 

Stay tuned for information on the 2015-2016 lineup of writers.  Meanwhile, please “like” the Women Writers of the Diaspora FB page and please feel free to shoot me a message at womenwritersofdiaspora@gmail.com if you have candidates or suggestions for the series.