Radical Poetry Reading with Brandon Shimoda

Brandon Shimoda is a yonsei poet and writer. His recent books are The Grave on the Wall (City Lights, 2019), which received the PEN Open Book Award, and The Desert (The Song Cave, 2018). He is also the curator of The Hiroshima Library, an itinerant reading room/collection of books on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, currently installed at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.

Aditi Machado is a poet, translator, and essayist. Her second book of poems Emporium received the James Laughlin Award and will appear in Fall 2020 from Nightboat. Her other works include the poetry collection Some Beheadings (Nightboat, 2017), a translation from the French of Farid Tali’s Prosopopoeia (Action Books, 2016), and several chapbooks the most recent of which are a long poem called Rhapsody (Albion Books, 2020) and an essay titles The End (Ugly Duckling Presse, coming soon). Machado’s work appears in journals like Lana Turner, Volt, The Chicago Review, Western Humanities Review, and Jacket2. A former Poetry Editor for Asymptote (2011-2019), she works as an Assistant Professor at the University of Cincinnati.

Angel Dominguez has survived a 100 year flood, a close encounter with a bear, a fire, a second fire, and a lifetime of systemic racism. They will not go down without a fight. They’re the author of ROSESUNWATER (The Operating system press, 2020) and Black Lavender Milk (Timeless, Infinite Light 2015). Their third book, DESGRACIADO (the collected letters) is forthcoming with Nightboat Books in 2021.

Canisia Lubrin is a writer, critic, editor and teacher whose most recent book is The Dyzgrapxst (McClelland & Stewart, 2020). Her debut collection, Voodoo Hypothesis (Wolsak & Wynn, 2017), was named a CBC Best Book. Lubrin’s publications include translations of her work into Spanish, Italian, French and German with work appearing or forthcoming in Room, Brick, Joyland, Poetry London, Poets.org, blackiris.co, and elsewhere. Her writing has been recognized by, among others, the Toronto Book Award, Journey Prize, Gerald Lampert, Pat Lowther, and the Writers Trust. Lubrin’s first collection of short fiction is forthcoming.

Dao Strom is the author of the poetry collection, Instrument (Fonograf Editions), and its musical companion piece, Traveler’s Ode (Antiquated Future Records), forthcoming this fall; a bilingual poetry-art book, You Will Always Be Someone From Somewhere Else; an experimental memoir, We Were Meant To Be a Gentle People, and song cycle, East/West; and two books of fiction. She has received awards from the Creative Capital Foundation, Literary Arts, RACC, the NEA, and others. She is the co-founder of two collaborative art projects, She Who Has No Master(s), and De-Canon. Dao Strom was born in Vietnam and grew up in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

S*an D. Henry-Smith is an artist and writer working primarily in poetry, photography, and performance, engaging Black experimentalisms and collaborative practices. S*an is also the author of two chapbooks, Body Text and Flotsam Suite: A Strange & Precarious Life, or How We Chronicled the Little Disasters & I Won’t Leave the Dance Floor Til It’s Out of My System. Wild Peach, released fall 2020, is their first full-length collection.

Youna Kwak is a poet, translator, and teacher. Her first poetry collection, entitled “sur vie,” was published this year by Fathom Books. She lives in the Inland Empire.