Event description: Brought to you by poet and performer Alexa Patrick, and DC-based clothing brand CHRiS CARDi, FRIENDSGIVING is a poetry reading and clothing pop-up shop centered around gratitude. This event will also include a Q+A, book signing, and light refreshments. (Put this in purple because I'm not sure if this is allowed. Please let me know).
Alexa Patrick (she/her) is a vocalist and poet from Connecticut. She is the author of Remedies for Disappearing (Haymarket Books 2023) and holds fellowships from Cave Canem, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and more. In spring 2023, Alexa made her stage production debut as Un/Sung in the opera We Shall Not Be Moved, (dire. Bill T. Jones). You may find her work in publications including Adroit, CRWN Magazine, and The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic. Visit alexapatrick.com for more.
Rasheed Copeland is a native of Washington, DC. He is the author of The Book of Silence: Manhood as a Pseudoscience (Sergeant Press, 2015) and is a multiple recipient of the DC Commission of the Arts and Humanities Fellowship Award. He has performed and facilitated writing workshops across the country and internationally. His work has been featured in online publications such as Poets.org, Split This Rock, and the Crab Orchard Review.
Taylor Johnson is from Washington, DC. He is the author of Inheritance (Alice James Books, 2020), winner of the 2021 Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. His work appears in Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, The Baffler, Scalawag, and elsewhere. Johnson is a Cave Canem graduate fellow and a recipient of the 2017 Larry Neal Writers’ Award from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and the 2021 Judith A. Markowitz Award for Emerging Writers from Lambda Literary. Taylor was the inaugural 2022 Poet-in-Residence at the Guggenheim Museum. He is the Poet Laureate of Takoma Park, Maryland. With his wife, Elizabeth Bryant, Taylor curates the Green Way Reading Series at People’s Book in Takoma Park.
Kenny Carroll is a writer from DC. He was the 2017 DC Youth Poet Laureate, and in 2019 received the Thomas Lux Scholarship from Sarah Lawrence. His work has been featured in Split This Rock’s The Quarry, EcoTheo Review, Lampblack, and Beltway Quarterly, among others. He is a Watering Hole, Brooklyn Poets, and Obsidian fellow. And a 2023 Cave Canem Starshine and Clay fellow. You can find him online @Kennyc113.