Live Poetry: Herman Beavers, Anisha Bhat, Steve Burke, and Octavia McBride-Ahebee

Wednesday January 14, 2026 – 7pm 

Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street

Herman Beavers is an African American writer and the author of The Vernell Poems and Geography and the Political Imaginary in the Novels of Toni Morrison. Beavers’s honors include the Charles Ludwig Distinguished Teaching Award. He is currently a professor of English and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He lives in Burlington Township, New Jersey.

Anisha Bhat, originally from Chicago, Illinois, is a writer and staff member at Temple University where she directs research and creative programs for undergraduates. She has an MPhil in World History from the University of Cambridge and an MA in History from Northwestern University. In her free time she can be found buying too many books at used book stores, eating at the same five restaurants in South Philly, or working on her first poetry chapbook.

Steve Burke’s poems have been published in numerous journals & magazines; has three chapbooks – After The Harvest, For Now, & Small Answers – published by Moonstone Press. He has been a featured reader at the Painted Bride Arts Center, Moore College of Art, the Free Library, the Philadelphia Poetry Festival, the Big Blue Marble Bookstore, the Mad Poets’ Festival, the Green Line Café, along with Fergie’s Pub. He worked for 25 years as a labor and delivery nurse; lives with wife Giselle in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia.

Octavia McBride-Ahebee’s work is influenced by the convergence of cultures and the many ways in which people move throughout the world, she explores relationships within the broader framework of global inequality and contributes to The Africa Migration Report Poetry Anthology Series (exploring African and diasporic migration through poetry and is involved with Forced Migration and The Arts.) Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies including For Harriet, Raising Lilly Ledbetter; Women Poets Occupy the Workplace,  Yellow Medicine,  South Philly Fiction, Damazine; A Literary Journal of the Muslim World, Fingernails Across The Chalkboard: Poetry And Prose on HIV/AIDS From the Black Diaspora, Under Our Skin: Literature of Breast Cancer, The Journal of the National Medical Association, Art in Medicine Section, International Quarterly; Faces of the Americas, the Beloit Poetry Journal.  Her poetry collections include Assuming Voices, Where My Birthmark Dances and Praise Song for the Gravediggers.

Liz Allen Host – Open Reading Follows