Radical Poetry Reading with Paolo Javier

Filipino American poet, novelist, and playwright R. Zamora Linmark is the author of four poetry collections including The Evolution of a Sigh and Pop Vérité (Hanging Loose Press, 2008 and 2017). He is also the author of three novels: The Importance of Being Wilde at Heart (Delacorte Press 2019), Leche (Coffee House Press 2011), and Rolling the R’s (Kaya Press 1993) which was adapted for the stage and premiered in Honolulu in 2008. Linmark is currently the writer-in residence at Phillips Academy in Andover where he is at work on a novel and editing an anthology of prose and poetry in Hawaii Creole English, tentatively titled No Talk Li’ Dat.

First generation Filipina-Pakistani American poet, Shaheen Qureshi’s writing has been published in Changes Review, Pinsapo Press, and is forthcoming from Ewà Journal. She is an MFA candidate at Bard College and co-curator of the online reading series Here I Am Again.

Award-winning theater artist, educator, and arts activist, Kiki Rivera (she, we, they) holds a BA in Theater and an MFA in Playwriting from the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. Original plays include Puzzy, anthologized in Samoan Queer Lives, Faʻalavelave: The Interruption, and Lighting the Way: An Anthology of Short Plays About The Climate Crises. As an educated gender-queer Samoan-Filipinx born in raised in Hawaii, Rivera acknowledges their privilege and responsibilities to marginalized communities: their work focuses on cultural and sexual identity within a context of post-colonization as is one among many voices for Pacific Islanders in diaspora. “I believe in the value of self-reflective storytelling from a contemporary Indigenous perspective.”

Writer Charles Valle was born in Manila, Philippines and immigrated to California when he was seven years old. Since 2006, he has served as one of the Poetry Editors at FENCE Magazine, and his work has been featured in numerous publications including Denver Quarterly, Berkeley Poetry Review, among others. Valle lives in Portland, Oregon where he is a change-maker for Nike. His first book of poetry, Proof of Stake, is forthcoming from Fonograf Editions in June 2021.

Queens Borough 2010–2014 Poet Laureate, Paolo Javier was born in the Philippines and grew up in Las Piñas, Metro Manila; Katonah, Westchester County; El-Ma’adi, Cairo; Burnaby and North Delta, Metro Vancouver. He’s produced three albums of sound poetry with Listening Center (David Mason), including the limited edition pamphlet/cassette Ur’lyeh/ Aklopolis and the booklet/cassette Maybe the Sweet Honey Pours. The recipient of a 2021 Rauschenberg Foundation Artist Grant, Paolo was a featured artist in Greater NY 2015 and Queens International 2018: Volumes. His fifth full-length book of poetry, O.B.B. (a weird postcolonial techno dream-pop) with illustrations by Alex Tarampi and Ernest Concepcion, is forthcoming from Nightboat Books in Fall 2021.