https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82437345103?pwd=TGZ2R3JJbGpqN1ozcGl3QU1HRjlkdz09

Meeting ID: 824 3734 5103, Passcode: 253385, Phone: +1 646-876-9923

Ishmael Reed is the award-winning author of over twenty-five books including Mumbo Jumbo, The Last Days of Louisiana Red, Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down and Juice!. He is also a publisher, television producer, songwriter, radio and television commentator, lecturer, and has long been devoted to exploring an alternative black aesthetic: the trickster tradition, or Neo-Hoodooism as he calls it. Founder of the Before Columbus Foundation, he taught at the University of California, Berkeley for over thirty years, retiring in 2005. In 2003, he received the coveted Otto Award for political theater. His newest book is WHY THE BLACK HOLE SINGS THE BLUES ($15.95, Dalkey Archive Press). The poems in this new collection from Ishmael Reed were written between 2007 and 2020. They range from poems based on events that occurred around Reed’s house to cataclysmic space events. Some of the poems were commissioned. “Moving Richmond” was part of a public art installation created by Mildred Howard. The poem, in huge letters forged into weathering steel billboards greets passengers who enter the new Bay Area mass transit hub in Richmond, California. Other poems were commissioned by musicians. ”Hope Is The Thing With Feathers” was performed by Gregory Porter. “Red Summer, 2015” appeared in print first and then was set to music by David Murray. Reed writes, “The longest poem in the book, “Jazz Martyrs,” was begun when Reed learned about the number of black Jazz greats who didn’t live past the age of forty. “I have been fortunate to live beyond the age of 80,” says Reed. “I’ve found out who my best friends are. The ones who got me there.”

Tennessee Reed is the author of six poetry collections, a memoir and a novel. She has read her work around the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, England, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Israel and Japan. She is the chairperson of PEN Oakland and the managing editor of Konch Magazine. Her seventh poetry collection, Calafia Burning, is new collection of poems produced between the years 2012 and 2019 is Califia Burning: Poems, 2012-2019 ($17.95)

Aaren Perry, Host

Open reading follows