Inheriting Place: A Reading and Conversation, Friday, July 7, 2023, 7pm, with Ashia Ajani, Aerik Francis, Ahja Fox, and others!
Please join us on Friday, July 7, 2023, 7pm, at Counterpath (7935 East 14th Ave. in Denver) for Inheriting Place: A Reading and Conversation. Thinking broadly about the environment in environmental justice terms as the place “where we live, work, play, learn, and worship as well as the physical and natural world,” and expanding the concept of ecologies to mean the various ways we are connected and in conversation with one another, Ajani invited participating poets to think deeply about how their writing embodies elements of space, place and relation.
Ashia Ajani is a sunshower, a glass bead, a carnivorous plant, an overripe nectarine hailing from Denver, CO, Queen City of the Plains and the unceded territory of the Cheyenne, Ute, and Arapahoe peoples, now living in the Bay Area (unceded Ohlone land). Ajani is a lecturer in the AfAm Department at UC Berkeley and a climate resilient schools educator with Mycelium Youth Network. A BSF Award recipient, Ajani has received fellowships from Just Buffalo Literary Center, Tin House, The Watering Hole, UC Berkeley’s P4P Climate Activism Residency and the Milkweed Hub Chrysalis Institute. Their words have appeared in Sierra, Atmos, World Literature Today, Apogee Journal & Frontier Poetry, among others. Ajani is co-poetry editor of the Hopper Literary Magazine and the incoming Fall 2023 Poet in Residence at SF Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD). Ajani’s writing is a kaleidoscope of their work as an eco-griot and abolitionist. Her debut poetry collection, Heirloom (Write Bloody Publishing), is out now.
Aerik Francis (they/he) is a Queer Black & Latinx poet & teaching artist based in Denver, Colorado, USA. Francis is the author of two poetry chapbooks: MISEDUCATION (NDR 2023), winner of the 2022 New Delta Review Chapbook Prize, as well as BODYELECTRONIC (Trouble Department 2022). Aerik has received poetry fellowship support from CantoMundo, The Watering Hole, The Chrysalis Institute, and Sundress Academy for the Arts. They are also a poetry reader for Underblong poetry journal and a coordinator with Slam Nuba. Their work may be found on their website phaentompoet.com
Ahja Fox is the Poet Laureate of Aurora, Colorado. She has editorial, hosting, and teaching experience and has published in various online and print journals. One of her two draft manuscripts was a CAAPP Book Prize Finalist in 2021 and a GASHER Press First Book Scholarship Finalist in 2022. Discover more at dangerspoetics.wordpress.com/ and follow her on any social media platform @aefoxx.