Tidal Basin Review will host a reading at the Thurgood Marshall Center, 1816 12th Street N.W., Washington, DC 20009. No charge. Donations welcomed. Featuring Reginald Dwayne Betts, Iman Byfield, Ching-In Chen, Michela Costello, DéLana R.A. Dameron, Kyle Dargan, Elizabeth Fogle, Brian Gilmore, and Douglas Kearney. Music by DJ AJ and refreshments to follow.
Reginald Dwayne Betts is a husband and the father of a young son. He is the author of the memoir A Question of Freedom and the poetry collection Shahid Reads His Own Palm.
Iman Byfield is an MFA-Poetry candidate at Chicago State University. She works as an editorial assistant at Third World Press, and is a poetry editor for 95Notes literary magazine. Her work has appeared in the Garland Court Review and Eight Magazine, a student publication.
Ching-In Chen is the author of The Heart’s Traffic (Arktoi Books/Red Hen Press). Daughter of Chinese immigrants, she is a Kundiman, Macondo and Lambda Fellow. A community organizer, she has worked in the Asian American communities of San Francisco, Oakland, and Boston. Ching-In is a member of Save Our Chinatown Committee, which is focused on preserving the historical Riverside Chinatown.
Michela Costello is a poet and teacher in Washington, DC. She is currently an adjunct professor of English and Education. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in The Glasgow Review, Wanderlust and Poetryfish, among others.
DéLana R.A. Dameron is the author of How God Ends Us selected by Elizabeth Alexander as the 2008 South Carolina Poetry Book Award winner. She currently resides in New York City.
Kyle Dargan is the founder and editor of POST NO ILLS magazine and an assistant professor of literature and creative writing at American University. His most recent collection is Logorrhea Dementia: A Self-Diagnosis (UGA, 2010). His first collection, The Listening, was awarded the 2003 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and his second, Bouquet of Hungers, won a 2008 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award.
Elizabeth Fogle writes poems very much rooted in place and myth and though she is no longer living in the Carolinas or near the Atlantic, she continues to write about the places and people that haunted her as a child. She currently teaches in the English program at Penn State Erie, the Behrend College and lives in Erie, Pennsylvania.
Brian Gilmore is Poet, public interest lawyer; two books: elvis presley is alive and well and living in harlem, (Third World Press 1993); Jungle Nights and Soda Fountain Rags: Poem for Duke Ellington (Karibu Books 2001), columnist, The Progressive Media Project, contributing writer: Ebony Magazine (online); Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council in 2001, 2003; Cave Canem fellow 1997; Pushcart Prize nominee 2007.
Poet/Performer/Librettist Douglas Kearney’s work has been featured in many fine publications and venues in print, in-the-flesh and digital code. His first full-length collection of poems, Fear, Some, was published in 2006 (Red Hen Press). His second manuscript, The Black Automaton, was a National Poetry Series selection (Fence). He lives in the Valley with his family.
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