Ahmad Almallah grew up in Bethlehem, Palestine and moved to the U.S. when he was 18 years old. He is a poet, scholar, and translator of Arabic literature. His set of poems “Recourse,” won the 2017 Blanche Colton Williams Fellowship. His poems have appeared in Jacket 2, Track//Four, All Roads Will Lead You Home, Apiary and forthcoming in Making Mirrors: Righting/Writing by Refugees and Supplement.

Cynthia Dewi Oka is the author of Salvage and Nomad of Salt and Hard Water. A three-time Pushcart Prize Nominee, her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, Guernica, Black Renaissance Noire, The Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. She has served as a Poetry Mentor for the Blueshift Journal’s Speakeasy Project, and is the creator of Sanctuary: A Migrant Poetry Workshop for immigrant poets in Philadelphia.

An open reading will follow the featured readers. The event is free and 21+.

Hosts: Jennifer Hook and Alina Macneal