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Event Description: Celebrate Juneteenth with writers from Cave Canem, a leading literary organization that cultivates the growth of Black poets. At LOVE WAS THE LIFEBOAT, hosted by poet and performer Alexa Patrick, award-winning writers Sacha Marvin, Taylor Johnson, Malik Thompson, and debut author W.J. Lofton will move the audience through a feast of language. Come fellowship, laugh, and jubilate at this free and freedom-centric event!
Drinks will be available for purchase.
Book Signing to immediately follow programming.
Bookstore partner: Mahogany Books
Author/Reader Bios:
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. Previous artistic partnerships of Alexa’s include Meta, Microsoft, The Kennedy Center, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts. 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, The Rumpus, CRWN Magazine, and The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic. Visit alexapatrick.com for more.
Malik Thompson (he/they) is a Black queer person from Washington, DC. Having worked in independent bookstores for many years, he is also the former Co-Chair of OutWrite DC and has taught workshops for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Hurston/Wright Foundation, and other organizations. His work has been published in the Cincinnati Review, Denver Quarterly, Hayden's Ferry Review, and elsewhere. He has received fellowships and residencies from organizations including Cave Canem, Lambda Literary, the Anderson Center, and Monson Arts.
W. J. Lofton, a Chicago-born poet and multimodal artist, is the author of A Garden for Black Boys Between the Stages of Soil and Stardust. His work explores the intersections of race, class, and gender while focusing on Black queer men’s attempts at intimacy and the tensions and wonders of boyhood. Lofton has received fellowships from Cave Canem and Emory University. A recipient of Ava DuVernay’s LEAP Grant, his work has appeared in TIME, wildness, Obsidian, and Scalawag. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia, where he co-curates Rebellion: A Writing Salon.
Sacha Marvin is a writer, performer and award winning urban and architectural designer from Southeastern Virginia. A recipient of fellowships from Callaloo and Cave Canem, Marvin’s written work can be found in The Adroit Journal, Split this Rock’s The Quarry, EcoTheo Review and elsewhere. Marvin has been a finalist or semi-finalist for prizes for poetry, screenwriting and playwrighting at The Georgia Review, Indiana Review, Frontier Poetry, Black Lawrence Press, Glass Poetry, Two Sylvia’s Press, the Vail Film Festival and the Richmond International Film Festival. Sacha Marvin currently resides in Washington DC.
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 and a 2024 Whiting Award. 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.