Radical Poetry Reading with Steph Gray

Poet and country singer Julian Talamantez Brolaski the author of Of Mongrelitude (Wave Books 2017), Advice for Lovers (City Lights 2012), and gowanus atropolis (Ugly Duckling Presse 2011). With Juan & the Pines, they released an EP Glittering Forest in 2019. Their first full-length album is coming out this summer. Julian’s poetry was recently included in When the Light of the World was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry (2020) and We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics (Nightboat 2020).

Brenda Coultas is the author of five collections of poetry, including The Tatters (Wesleyan University Press, 2014) and The Marvelous Bones of Time (Coffee House Press, 2007). Her work can be found in Bomb, The Brooklyn Rail, and the anthology Readings in Contemporary Poetry (Dia). Her new book, The Writing of an Hour, is just out from Wesleyan University Press in 2022.

Jen/Eleana Hofer is a poet, translator, social justice interpreter, teacher, facilitator, and urban cyclist. They live on unceded Tongva land in Los Angeles, where they teach writing, work as Sins Invalid’s Language Justice Coordinator, and do language justice advocacy and organizing. They have received support from many entities, including CantoMundo, the Academy of American Poets, the City of Los Angeles, the NEA, and PEN American Center. Jen/Eleana publishes with numerous small independent presses and in various DIY/DIT incarnations. Excerpts from their most recent project, unremembering are at Map Magazine.

Brenda Iijima is a poet, novelist, playwright, choreographer and visual artist. She is the author of nine books of poetry. Her current work engages submerged and occluded histories, other-than-human modes of expression and telluric awareness in all forms. A play, Daily Life in China is forthcoming from elis press in 2023, a novel Presence is forthcoming from Georgia Review Press in 2023. A novella, A roundtable, unanimous dreamers chime in, written in collaboration with Janice Lee is forthcoming from Meekling Press and a collaborative chapbook, The Center for Hierarchical Thinking, written with Annie Won is due out in 2023. Iijima is the founding editor-publisher of Portable Press @ Yo-Yo Labs. She lives in Brooklyn.

Poet-filmmaker Steph Gray is the author of seven poetry collections, including Shorthand and Electric Language Stars (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2015), and the chapbooks Words Are What You Get/You Do It For Real (above/ground press, 2019) and A Country Road Going Back in Your Direction (Argos Books, 2015). Gray’s experimental super 8 films and videos have screened internationally, including retrospectives at San Francisco Cinematheque, Anthology Film Archives, Microscope Gallery and Mono No Aware in NYC.