Lampblack Lit reading and fundraiser for Independent Bookstore Day

with Naomi Jackson, Brittany Allen, and Simeon Marsalis

Independent Bookstore Day is right around the corner! We are so lucky to celebrate the right way with the incredible @thewordischange in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn. Join us next Saturday, April 27th at 3pm — featuring readings by @thenaomijackson, @amazongenue, and @etherealsimon. You can view their work in previous editions of Lampblack Magazine (we’ll have copies available)✨

ABOUT THE AUTHORS🌿

Naomi Jackson is the author of a novel, The Star Side of Bird Hill (Penguin Press). Jackson studied fiction at the lowa Writers’ Workshop. She traveled to South Africa on a Fulbright scholarship, where she received an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. A graduate of Williams College, Jackson’s writings have appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s, and The Washington Post. She is the recipient of residencies and fellowships from MacDowell Colony, Hedgebrook, Camargo Foundation, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Jackson is Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Rutgers University-Newark.

Brittany K. Allen is a Brooklyn-based writer and performer. Her prose appears or is forthcoming in Epiphany, Catapult, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, and Kenyon Review Online, among other places, and her short fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. A MacDowell fellow, her award-winning stage plays have been produced and developed in New York, Portland, Kansas City, and Minneapolis. She is currently working on her first novel.

Simeon Marsalis is a writer from New Rochelle, NY, who earned a BA with honors from the University of Vermont for his thesis on Jazz and American Nationalism and an MFA in 2019 from Rutgers University-Newark, where he was the Henry Rutgers Fellow. As Lie Is to Grin, his first novel was published by Catapult in 2017 and was on the shortlist for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. His short story, “The Exterminator”, appeared in the Fall 2021 Founder’s Issue of Lampblack, a magazine and literary organization he helped to co-found. Marsalis is working on his second novel entitled, End Times, and is currently a part-time lecturer in the English Department at Rutgers University-Newark.

Independent Bookstore Day & Libro.FM Golden Ticket Hunt

Dare To Struggle NYC discussion group

Please join us Thursday March 28th at 7pm for a discussion of The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground by Ron Jacobs facilitated by Dare To Struggle NYC.

You do not have to have read the book to attend, but, of course, it’s great if you have. Copies are available at the store. (Copies of Prairie Fire are also available)

And mark your calendar/reading list for the upcoming sessions. (Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT-UP by Sarah Schulmann is a BIG book and we have discounted copies of it in stock!)

Azad Ashim Sharma // Kevin Holden // Emily Lee Luan // jason b. crawford

The Word Is Change is pleased to host a poetry night in celebration of the New York launch for Azad Ashim Sharma’s Boiled Owls.

COVID PROTOCOLS: We always have masks available in the store. For events, which involve sitting in close contact for a longer period of time, masks are recommended and we appreciate your participation. We keep us safe.

Dare To Struggle NYC discussion group

Please join us Thursday March 28th at 7pm for a discussion of The Young Lords: A Radical History by Johanna Fernandez facilitated by Dare To Struggle NYC.

You do not have to have read the book to attend, but, of course, it’s great if you have. Copies are available at the store.

And mark your calendar/reading list for the upcoming sessions. (Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT-UP by Sarah Schulmann is a BIG book and we have discounted copies of it in stock!)

Anselm Jappe’s The Self-Devouring Society: Capitalism, Narcissism, and Self-Destruction

A conversation with Eric-John Russell, Jamie Keesling, and Andy Battle

Please join Eric-John Russell (who translated the book), Jamie Keesling, and Andy Battle for a conversation that envelopes Marx as well as Freud, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, Christopher Lasch, and Jappe to probe the ways in which the churning of the capitalist machine, ceaseless and yet devoid of real purpose, creates an endless hunger that increasingly ends in spectacular violence.

“An absolutely remarkable essay on the links between narcissism and ultra-capitalism. It should be read with a solid reserve of coffee and silence at your disposal: its analysis is as fascinating as it is sharp.”—Maïa Mazaurette, GQ France

Eric-John Russell is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institut für Philosophie, Universität Potsdam. He is the author of Spectacular Logic in Hegel and Debord: Why Everything Is as it Seems and an editor of Cured Quail. He lives in Berlin.

Jamie Keesling is a New York-based writer and educator. Her writings, lectures, and research range on topics including art criticism; gender and sexuality; emancipatory politics, especially exemplified by mid-twentieth century Frankfurt School theory; as well as the history of psychoanalysis and politics. Her writings have been published in The Art Newspaper, Caesura, Hyperallergic, The Platypus Review, and Sublation Magazine. 

Andy Battle is a writer, editor, and teacher living in New York.

Radical Imagination Workshop

Convening and Collectively Imagining More Just, Caring, and Equitable Worlds During These Dark Times

Facilitated by Mina and Tom

“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” — Arundhati Roy 

Today’s oppressive and unjust world exists because someone imagined it. But we all have the ability to do so, and it's time to exercise it to undo harmful systems and radically imagine more just, loving, and equitable worlds for all, as the first step towards building them! How?

Come join your allies in the cause of collective liberation at the Radical Imagination Workshop, where we will collectively participate in activities that are designed to spark our innate ability to imagine alternative realities where late-stage capitalism, imperialism, fascism, neoliberalism, and genocide are not the norm, where everyone is liberated, everyone is cared for and everyone is kind.

Mina (she/her) is a curious and empathetic female futurist and activist who grew up by the Arabian Sea, situating her mind, heart, and body on the messy bleeding edge of creative practice to resist systems of oppression and unapologetically fight for marginalized people's right to dream again.

Tom Bond (he/him) originally from Delaware, is a New York based thinker, strategist, community engager, radical imaginer, and “designer.” His work interrogates our current systems, and strategically questions and intervenes in ways that work to collectively resist systems of oppression, and collectively create and imagine systems that are more just, caring, and equitable for all. 

Disaster Communism

with Ashley Dawson & Ajay Singh Chaudhary

Please join Ashley Dawson and Ajay Singh Chaudhary for a discussion and celebration of their new books Environmentalism from Below: How Global People’s Movements are Leading the Fight for Our Planet (Haymarket) and The Exhausted of the Earth: Politics in a Burning World (Repeater) which investigate the movements that have long been at the forefront of the fight to protect imperiled worlds. Today, as the world’s forests burn and our oceans acidify, these grassroots movements are tenaciously defending the environmental commons and forging just and sustainable ways of living on Earth.

As Chaudhary explains, Climate change is not only about the exhaustion of the planet, it’s about the exhaustion of so many of us, our lives, our worlds, even our minds. He shows how a new politics particular to the climate catastrophe demands a bitter struggle between those attached to the power, wealth, and security of “business-as-usual” and all of us, those exhausted, in every sense of the word, by the status quo.

And scholar and activist Ashley Dawson constructs a gripping narrative of these movements of climate insurgents, from international solidarity organizations like La Via Campesina and Shack Dwellers International to local struggles in South Africa, Colombia, India, Nigeria, and beyond. Taking up the four critical challenges we face in a warming world—food, urban sustainability, energy transition, and conservation—Dawson shows how the unruly power of environmentalism from below is charting an alternative path forward, from challenging industrial agriculture through fights for food sovereignty and agroecology to resisting extractivism using mass nonviolent protest and sabotage.

Praise for the books

"Ashley Dawson takes us on a wondrous tour of communities working for life after capitalism. These grassroots ecologies are so potent, and their promise so profound, they’ve elicited lethal violence from the state and private sector. For that reason Environmentalism from Below is also an atlas of the world's most important global struggles." —Raj Patel New York Times and international bestselling author of A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things

“Have you felt exhausted lately? In this wonderfully rich inquiry into late climate politics, Ajay Singh Chaudhary zooms in on exhaustion as the predicament of a world too long subjected to the ‘extractive circuit’ of capital: the constant sapping of energies, returning to the planet as excess heat. The wretched of the Earth are today the exhausted — and if there is any way to fight back, it is, as Chaudhary so convincingly argues, with southern resources, assembled by everyone from Frantz Fanon to Imam Mahdi. Bristling with ideas on every page, this book is the energy drink you need.”—Andreas Malm, author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline

About the authors

Ajay Singh Chaudhary is the executive director of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and a core faculty member specializing in social and political theory. He has written for The Guardian, The Nation, The Baffler, n+1, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among others.

Ashley Dawson is Professor of English at the Graduate Center / City University of New York and the College of Staten Island. He is the author of several books on key topics in the environmental humanities, including Decolonize Conservation: Global Voices for Indigenous Self-Determination, Land, and a World in Common  People’s Power: Reclaiming the Energy Commons, Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change, and Extinction: A Radical History. A member of the Public Power NY campaign and the founder of the CUNY Climate Action Lab, he is a long-time climate justice activist. 

Dare To Struggle NYC discussion group

And mark your calendar/reading list for the upcoming sessions. (Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT-UP by Sarah Schulmann is a BIG book and we have discounted copies of it in stock!)

Joy in the Soft Apocalypse Literary Salon (volume III)

Joy, laughter, fun, pleasure, beauty, excitement, and awe!

As we sit in the collective heartbreak of genocide, climate crisis and an evolving pandemic, we hold that imagination is a key componet of social justice. The work of writers, artists, and creatives of all kinds provides joy and clarity in this semi-apocalyptic world. Join us in loving community on Wednesday, February 28th and leave feeling enlivened and inspired.

Mel King
Zachary Wagner Scholl
Naomi Day
Jennifer Cho Salaff
Jerakah Greene
Mya Matteo Alexice
River 瑩瑩 Dandelion

COVID cases are increasing! Please wear a mask!

Hosts

Kate McDonough is a queer non binary trans writer, organizer and performance artist. Their work explores the politics of place v. space and finding radical queer joy in the midst of an apocalypse. Originally from the Bronx, Kate lives in Brooklyn and is an MFA Creative Writing candidate at The New School

Kelby Clark is a poet and fiction writer, based in Brooklyn, NY but born and bred across the Hudson in New Jersey. Currently, she's pursuing an MFA in creative writing at The New School. Her work explores topics of race and Black identity, as well as topics like the myth of suburban bliss. She also enjoys writing about and reading to her cat, Mowgli.

Red Braid--A Separate Star: Politics and Strategy for Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Colonial, and Anti-Imperialist Struggle 

Book launch and discussion hosted by Unity & Struggle

The book compiles lessons from the frontlines of various struggles around housing and land defense & against displacement and policing—work that centered Indigenous people and “subaltern” layers of the working class from 2012-2021. Presenters will reflect on their work and the theoretical contributions that flowed from their practice: anti-capitalism, indigenous sovereignty, decolonization, revolutionary trans feminism, anti-imperialism; and the “braided” relationships between them all.

A group discussion led by Unity & Struggle will identify lessons and lingering questions that apply to our context in New York City.

Art of Resistance!
Beehive Design Collective Winter Tour

presenting Mesoamérica Resiste & The True Cost of Coal

(yes this really is on a Tuesday)

The Beehive Design Collective is a wildly motivated, all-volunteer, activist arts collective dedicated to “cross-pollinating the grassroots” by creating collaborative, anti-copyright images for use as educational and organizing tools. They work as word-to-image translators of complex global stories, shared with us through conversations with affected communities.

In workshops and presentations giant, portable murals are used to deconstruct complex issues of globalization, climate change, colonization, and resource extraction. By provoking discussion, raising hard questions, and sharing hopeful stories about actions big and small we can take to build a better world. 

Dare To Struggle NYC discussion group

And mark your calendar/reading list for the upcoming sessions. (Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT-UP by Sarah Schulmann is a BIG book and we have discounted copies of it in stock!)

Speaking Out About Palestine: Repression In Your Work Place

with Art Workers’ Inquiry

The Art Workers' Inquiry stands in full solidarity with the people of Palestine and all who support them in their struggle against Israeli apartheid, occupation, and genocide.

As the global movement in support of Palestine grows, the forces of repression intensify their efforts to silence us. Come join the Art Workers' Inquiry on Friday January 26 at 7pm, at The Word Is Change bookstore in BedStuy, as we examine the ways repression and the fear it engenders show up in our daily lives. Our event will use the inquiry format to spark discussion between workers within and beyond the arts industry. We look forward to finding the connections between the forces that seek to silence us, and strategizing about ways to combat them. We hope to see you there.

Inversion (A Black Dawn Book) launch and discussion

Aric McBay in conversation with Black Dawn Series editor Sanina Clark

About Inversion: Char and her family are among the nomadic Summer people of Germinal who tend to the rich biodiversity of their world through reciprocity and ritual. They must forever travel to stay ahead of the walls of fire that approach like clockwork, bringing with them both loss and renewal. The flamewalls divide their world into threes: three seasons and three ways of life, keeping them from the Spring and Winter people, about whom they must never ask. 

Char is the first to spot the off-world landing vessels bearing the militaristic invaders whose intentions are far beyond her worldview. 

Graft is a captive servitor and personal attendant to the Conquis, leader of the vanguard forces. The last survivor of a culture annihilated by conquest, Graft is tortured by grief and determined to avoid notice, but he soon recognizes how unprepared Char and her people are to deal with the invasion. 

After one unsettling discovery leads to another, the newcomers find the nature of this land troubling and its denizens odd—perhaps nonhuman. When the mission turns darker, the inhabitants of the violated utopia must learn how to defend themselves or lose everything. 

Inversion stages an experiment in new possibilities of living, a tale of social struggle set in a wildly unique universe animated by questions of climate collapse and collective action. Aric McBay weaves a tale in the visionary spirit of Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy, and Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed.

They are the editor of the Black Dawn Series under AK Press, a speculative novella series which launched Fall 2021. Their bookcase is filled with YA, fantasy, sci-fi, mystery, horror, plays and queer literature. Clark is also involved in performance art and cosplay and can often be found purchasing large quantities of fake blood and tulle. They’ve stage managed shows at SUNY Purchase, Dance Theatre of Harlem, and the Lee Strasberg Theatre. They’re addicted to ramen, cat photos, tea, and Doctor Who paraphernalia. A perfect day to Clark involves lots of green tea while relaxing with a good book or anime and cuddling one of their three cats. They really love cats. 

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR INVERSION

"A masterful worldbuilding feat .... Never heavy-handed or preachy, this thought-provoking work of speculative fiction is sure to linger in readers’ minds.”—Publisher’s Weekly, ★ starred review

"Inversion is such a pleasure to read—it is richly backgrounded and genuinely engrossing. There are full and contradictory lives here, as well as a sense of immediacy, urgency, and awe. I found real and hard-won delight in it."—Daniel Lavery, New York Times bestselling author of Texts from Jane Eyre

"Aric McBay’s Inversion is a masterpiece of utopian resistance, where comprehension and cooperation are the keys to survival … It’s hope in a pocket universe, where the ability to look forward and back and inward is a deliberate, sustainable choice."—Octavia Cade, author of The Impossible Resurrections of Grief

PRAISE FOR ARIC MCBAY

“A sprawling dystopian debut.” —Kirkus Reviews, in praise of Kraken Calling: A Novel

"Political and climate activist McBay makes his fiction debut with this dystopia exploring a resistance movement via two alternating time lines…an inspiring call to action that will appeal to left-leaning readers seeking to create social change." — Booklist, in praise of Kraken Calling: A Novel

Chicarron de Corazon: Community Poetry Reading & Fire Relief Fundraiser

Please join us this Friday at 7pm for a poetry reading and fire relief fundraiser. The event is free and your support is encouraged.

Readings by:

-Emily Simons 

-Robert Balun 

-Latif Askia Ba 

-Andres Cordoba 

-Ryan Patrick Cooks 

In the short time this fundraiser has been organized to support poet Andres Cordoba other neighbors of ours on Tompkins have been displaced by fire. We will be working to support everyone.

Rattling the Cages: Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners

Josh Davidson with Matt Meyer and dequi kioni-sadiki

The official story is that the United States has no political prisoners. The reality is that there are hundreds of people rounded up, placed behind bars, and kept there for inordinately long sentences because of their political beliefs and activities.

A project of abolitionist Josh Davidson and political prisoner Eric King, this book is filled with the experience and wisdom of over thirty current and former North American political prisoners. It provides first-hand details of prison life and the political commitments that continue to lead prisoners into direct confrontation with state authorities and institutions. The people Josh Davidson has interviewed include former radicals and Black liberation militants from the sixties and seventies, current antifascists, nonviolent Catholic peace activists, Animal and Earth Liberation Front saboteurs, and more. Their stories are moving, often tragic, yet deeply inspiring.

Collectively, these people have spent hundreds of years behind bars, and their experiences speak directly to the cruelty and immorality of our prison and so-called criminal justice systems. Although their sentences and the conditions they have endured vary dramatically, this wide range of voices come together to embody what bell hooks called “a legacy of defiance.” It is this legacy—of tirelessly struggling to right today’s wrongs and create a better tomorrow—that the prison system tries, yet fails, to extinguish.

Royalties from book sales are split between the Anarchist Black Cross Federation’s Warchest, which provides financial support to currently imprisoned political prisoners, and the family of political prisoner Eric King.

Contributors include: Donna Willmott, James Kilgore, Mark Cook, Rebecca Rubin, Hanif Shabazz Bey, Chelsea Manning, Oso Blanco, Ann Hansen, Sean Swain, Martha Hennessy, Jalil Muntaqim, Jeremy Hammond, Kojo Bomani Sababu, Laura Whitehorn, Eric King, Rattler, Ray Luc Levasseur, Elizabeth McAlister, Malik Smith, David Campbell, Xinachtli, David Gilbert, Susan Rosenberg, Daniel McGowan, Linda Evans, Herman Bell, Jennifer Rose, Ed Mead, Jerry Koch, Michael Kimble, Bill Harris, Jaan Laaman, Jake Conroy, Marius Mason, Bill Dunne, Oscar López Rivera

Josh Davidson is an abolitionist who is involved in numerous projects, including the Certain Days collective that publishes the annual Freedom for Political Prisoners calendar and the Children’s Art Project with political prisoner Oso Blanco. Josh also works in communications with the Zinn Education Project, which promotes the teaching of radical people’s history in classrooms and provides free lessons and resources for educators. He lives in Eugene, Oregon.

Matt Meyer is an internationally recognized author, academic, organizer, and educator who serves as Secretary-General of the International Peace Research Association, the world's leading consortium of university-based professors, scholars, students, and community leaders. Meyer is the Senior Research Scholar of the University of Massachusetts/Amherst Resistance Studies Initiative, active also with the War Resisters' International and the International Fellowship of Reconciliation.

The author/editor of over a dozen books on radical social change, Meyer has led seminars, trainings, conferences, and organizing talks in over 100 countries across five continents - including in his native Brooklyn, New York. His work on human rights, an end to all occupations and colonialism, and on behalf of political prisoners has gained him the respect and support of Nobel Peace laureates Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, Adolfo Perez Esquivel of Argentina, and many others. Some of his work can be found here: https://blog.pmpress.org/authors-artists-comrades/matt-meyer/

dequi kioni-sadiki is a Coordinating Committee member of the Spirit of Mandela Coalition, the former chair of the Malcolm X Commemoration Committee, and leader of the Sekou Odinga Defense Committee which waged a successful campaign for the release of her husband. A tireless coalition-builder and organizer, dequi is a radio producer of the WBAI-Radio/Pacifica show "Where We Live"; a retired educator with the NYC Department of Education; and a member of the Jericho Movement to Free All Political Prisoners. She co-edited Look for Me in the Whirlwind: From the Panther 21 to 21st Century Revolutions (PM Press, 2019).

Eric King is a father, poet, author, and activist. He is a political prisoner serving a ten-year federal sentence for an act of protest over the police murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. He is scheduled to be released in 2024. He has been held in solitary confinement for years on end and has been assaulted by both guards and white supremacists. Eric has published three zines: Battle Tested (2015); Antifa in Prison (2019); and Pacing in My Cell (2019).  His sentencing statement is included in the book Defiance: Anarchist Statements Before Judge and Jury (2019).

Poetry for the Liberation of Palestine

Step into the heart of "Poetry for the Liberation of Palestine," a poetry reading dedicated to amplifying voices in solidarity with Palestinian liberation, decolonization, and anti-imperialism.

Join us as poets weave narratives that challenge the status quo and inspire thought on breaking free from oppressive structures. Come be a part of the movement as the poems and their echoes contribute to the collective call for a liberated Palestine.

Andrea Abi-Karam
Hazem Fahmy
Lara Atallah
charles theonia
Sarah Aziza
imogen xtian smith
Alma Valdez-Garcia

How to Form a Book Club

Yahdon Israel
(founder and host of Literary Swag Book Club)

A graduate of Pace University, Yahdon has an MFA from The New School, and teaches creative writing at CUNY and the Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop. His work has appeared in Poets & Writers, Guernica, LitHub, and other outlets. He was Editorial Director of Northside Media and Editor-in-Chief of Brooklyn Magazine. He also served as Content and Social Media Director for MakersFinders, Inc.

Yahdon began snapping pictures of stylishly dressed New Yorkers reading books around town and posting them on Instagram with the hashtag #LiterarySwag. This practice morphed into a cultural movement comprising the Literaryswag Book Club, which boasts hundreds of members, monthly meetings, and a robust social media presence; and the podcast Lit, a weekly interview series hosted by Yahdon featuring writers talking about books and culture. Yahdon describes Literary Swag as “the intersection of fashion and literature, which makes literature more accessible to people who don’t read” (the quote is from this NBC News video interview with him).

Yahdon has also served as a preliminary reader for both the Whiting Award and the Aspen Words Literary Award, and has worked extensively with the board of the National Book Critics Circle, including helping to produce the NBCC Awards ceremony.atever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Joy in the Soft Apocalypse Literary Salon

Come hear Poetry, Fiction, and Non-Fiction work from Local Emerging Writers!

Joy, laughter, fun, pleasure, beauty, excitement, and awe! We may all still be mid-climate crisis, mid-pandemic, and (who knows) maybe mid-zombie apocalypse someday soon. Yet, despite the noise and chaos, we have each other! 

The work of writers, artists, and creatives of all kinds provides joy and clarity in this semi-apocalyptic world. Join us in loving community on Thursday, November 30th and leave feeling enlivened and inspired.

Hosts

Kate McDonough is a queer non binary trans writer, organizer and performance artist. Their work explores the politics of place v. space and finding radical queer joy in the midst of an apocalypse. Originally from the Bronx, Kate lives in Brooklyn and is an MFA Creative Writing candidate at The New School

Kelby Clark is a poet and fiction writer, based in Brooklyn, NY but born and bred across the Hudson in New Jersey. Currently, she's pursuing an MFA in creative writing at The New School. Her work explores topics of race and Black identity, as well as topics like the myth of suburban bliss. She also enjoys writing about and reading to her cat, Mowgli.

Dare To Struggle NYC discussion group

Bainbridge Island Notebook & Female Body Retold poetry reading and book launch

with Uche Nduka and Giorgia Pavlidou

Sheltering with his wife and child on Washington State's Bainbridge Island during a global pandemic, the poet as political surrealist considers themes of isolation and connection in the most personal terms using his unique brand of explosive abstraction to carve out a space to explore the meaning of home, family, and diaspora.

Black Love Letters

with Natalie Johnson, Cole Brown, and special guests RHIANNA JONES, AKILI KING, MALACHI ELIJAH, SOJOURNER BROWN, and ALLISA CHARLES-FINDLEY 

Cole Brown is an author, producer, and political commentator. His first book, Greyboy: Finding Blackness in a White World was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award and selected for Steph Curry’s “Underrated” book club. His first co-authored book, First Impressions, was released in May ’22. Cole’s opinion writing appears in GQ, W, CNN, NBC, and others. He was a 2022 Forbes 30 Under 30 in Media honoree. Today, he lives in New York working on various literary and film projects.

Natalie Johnson is a writer and illustrator who focuses on social justice. She is a former segment producer for MSNBC, VICE TV, and Black News Channel. Her writing can be found at MSNBC.com’s Know Your Value. Natalie holds a master’s degree in sociology from Columbia University and lives in New York City.

“There are many books about love but precious few are love. That’s a more difficult challenge—concentrating love to words on a page, capturing love as it is, delivering it still intact. Cole, Natalie, and the many authors in Black Love Letters have done just that—distilled love to soothe your soul. I just know you’ll love it like I do.”
—John Legend

SPECIAL GUESTS

RHIANNA JONES is a writer, activist, and model. Her passions are sustainable fashion, female narratives, and cultural inclusivity, and her viral Afro Emoji campaign started a global convo about beauty norms. 

AKILI KING is a journalist and senior editor at Rose Inc. During her time as a beauty editor at Vogue, she created a column, “Texture Diaries,” that celebrates and affirms Black beauty, which she still writes to this day. Additionally, King writes for various magazines—where her writing spans topics such as beauty, wellness, culture, and music— including the Cut’s “Auto-Refill” column, Essence, Coveteur, Allure, and many others.

MALACHI ELIJAH is a musician, performer, songwriter, and part of the hip-hop collective SPACE CADE7S. Elijah also works in providing mentorship and artistic development for historically marginalized teens and young adults with the nonprofit Art Start in New York City.

SOJOURNER BROWN is a poet and multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Her writing has been published in literary journals, and she has been a featured guest in spoken-word events at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and other venues across NYC. Additionally, as an artist, Brown is currently in the cast of Hadestown on Broadway, and her work as an actor and vocalist has been seen on Disney Channel, Freeform, NBC, and at Carnegie Hall. She is currently working on an upcoming EP and a poetry book debut.

ALLISA CHARLES-FINDLEY is president of the Botham Jean Foundation, which was created after her twenty-six-year-old brother, Botham Jean, was murdered by an off-duty police officer in his apartment in Dallas, Texas. His name became a rallying cry for nationwide protests, and Findley has since worked to keep his name alive by promoting Christian intervention for social change, justice for police brutality victims, and police reform.

The Beloved Community: Bed-Stuy Book Launch

Patricia Spears Jones with Nicole Callihan and Ricardo Maldonado

Later, the collection widens its view, leaving Brooklyn to visit the consequences of violence across America. From the Atlanta Child Murders to the murder of Nia Wilson, The Beloved Community is fearless in its rage and hope as it explores what disrupts—oppression, injustice, loss, grief, and a fraught sense of the erotic. Largely dedicated to musicians, artists, and fellow poets, Jones acknowledges art as a tool for both care and resistance, recognizing that “voice is our greatest magic.” Imbued with history, laced with tenderness, and channeling a long tradition of the blues in African American poetics, The Beloved Community speaks with spark and urgency.

Jones is the winner of the 2017 Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers and the recipient of a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. An active literary citizen of New York for over four decades, Jones served as program coordinator for The Poetry Project of St. Marks Church and founded the WORDS Sunday series in Brooklyn. Currently, Jones is a Senior Fellow Emeritus of the Black Earth Institute.

Dare To Struggle NYC discussion group

Abolition Dreams: Poetry + Convo

with Jackie Wang + Christopher Soto
moderated by: Ludwig Hurtado

Trotsky in Tijuana

with Dan La Botz

Praise for Trotsky in Tijuana

“Trotsky’s final exile in Mexico was one of solitude, the world of his concerns an ocean away. He wrote in profusion, analyzing and responding to events of gigantic magnitude, but his milieu, the revolutionary generation of Bolsheviks, were wiped out by Stalin. And then Trotsky was assassinated.

“Imagine now that Stalin’s assassin missed his mark, and Trotsky was whisked off to Tijuana, the southern border of San Diego, but still in Mexico, to live out his days, alive but even more remote. That is the premise of Dan La Botz’s riveting historical novel, a ‘what if’ immersed in Left Oppositionist thought and praxis that convincingly creates an alternative reality. La Botz masterfully weaves the history, politics and people into a gripping tale with twists and turns that are no less amazing than the history itself. You won’t be able to put it down, and you’ll argue with it long after.”

– Suzi Weissman, author of Victor Serge: A Political Biography

“Trotsky in Tijuana is a great read. It is fairly races along and it allows you to get a real grasp of the key political discussions of the time while understanding the human side of Trotsky, Natalia and their circle.”
– Dave Kellaway

“…this is a skillfully written and politically engaging book—certainly among the best of the novels in English based on Trotsky’s life.” 
– Bill Keach,

“Yet La Botz arguably takes on a more difficult task than the novels by Kingsolver and Padura, since they are not focused on exploring Trotsky the human being.” – Paul LeBlanc

Radical Publishing in Political Headwinds

Publishers from independent presses such as Feminist Press, PM Press, Common Notions Press, and LittlePuss Press, discuss the imperative of publishing books that uplift marginalized and insurgent voices, create and complicate representation, and spark and amplify movements. This is even more critical during challenging political times, when individuals are being disempowered, and marginalized communities are being scapegoated and stripped of their rights. These publishers will speak on the challenges of publishing radical books against political headwinds, why it matters, and the impact that radical books, writers, and conversations have within their communities and beyond. They'll also discuss their dreams for the future of radical indie publishing and indie literary community.

Participants

• Whitney Hu [moderator], Director of Civic Engagement and Research at Churches United for Fair Housing, Board of Directors, Feminist Press

• Margot Atwell, Executive Director & Publisher, Feminist Press 

• Malav Kanuga, Founding Editor & Publisher, Common Notions Press

• Ramsey Kanaan, Co-founder & Publisher, PM Press

• Cat Fitzpatrick, Co-founder & Publisher, LittlePuss Press

Participant Bios

Whitney Hu (she/her) is the Director of Civic Engagement and Research at Churches United for Fair Housing and a community organizer based in Sunset Park. She organizes specifically around: tenant's rights, anti-gentrification and displacement, mutual aid, food sovereignty, and immigration justice. Previously, she was the Director of Public Programs for National Book Foundation and the Marketing & Communications Director for the Strand Bookstore.

Margot Atwell (she/her/hers) is a writer, editor, publisher, speaker, and community funding expert. She is the Executive Director and Publisher of Feminist Press. Previously, she was Head of Publishing and Director of Community Outreach at Kickstarter, PBC, and Publisher of Beaufort Books. In 2019, she was selected as a Publishers Weekly Star Watch Honoree and received the Digital Book World Outstanding Achievement Award. She’s the co-author of The Insider’s Guide to Book Publishing Success, and author of Derby Life. You can find her on Twitter or Instagram at @MargotAtwell, and read her writing in her On the Books newsletter.

Cat Fitzpatrick is the first trans woman to serve as Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies program at Rutgers University–Newark, and the Editrix at LittlePuss Press. She is the author of a collection of poems, Glamour­puss (Topside Press) and co-edited the anthology Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction & Fantasy from Transgender Writers, which won the ALA Stonewall Award for Literature. The Call-Out is her first novel.

Ramsey Kanaan has been at various times the founder of AK Press (named after his mother’s initials), a teenage punk rocker, middle-aged folk singer, centerfold pin-up, anarchist book fair founder, vegan all-you-can-eat enthusiast, right (and left) midfield amateur soccer player, cofounder/publisher at PM Press, and devoted husband and father. Actually, he still is.

Malav Kanuga (he/him) is founding editor and publisher of Common Notions Press. He is also a founding member of Making Worlds Cooperative Bookstore & Social Center (Philadelphia), and before that, a longstanding collective owner-member of Bluestockings Bookstore (New York). He is a researcher at the Media, Inequality, and Change Center at the Annenberg School for Communication at University of Pennsylvania / Rutgers University. He received his PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the City University of New York. Malav Kanuga’s research and movement-based media projects explores collective experiences of urban life, politics, and mobilization.

We Go Where They Go: The Story of Anti-Racist Action

Book Club & Discussion facilitated by Dare To Struggle NYC

About the book: When skinheads and punks in the late 1980s found their communities invaded by white supremacists and neo-nazis, they fought back. Influenced by anarchism, feminism, Black liberation, and Indigenous sovereignty, they created Anti-Racist Action. At ARA's height in the 1990s, thousands of dedicated activists in hundreds of chapters joined the fights--political and sometimes physical--against nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, anti-abortion fundamentalists, and racist police. Before media pundits, cynical politicians, and your uncle discovered "antifa," Anti-Racist Action was bringing it to the streets.

Based on extensive interviews with dozens of ARA participants, We Go Where They Go tells ARA's story from within, giving voice to those who risked their safety in their own defense and in solidarity with others. In reproducing the posters, zines, propaganda and photos of the movement itself, this essential work of radical history illustrates how cultural scenes can become powerful forces for change. Here at last is the story of an organic yet highly organized movement, exploring both its triumphs and failures, and offering valuable lessons for today's generation of activists and rabble-rousers. We Go Where They Go is a page-turning history of grassroots anti-racism. More than just inspiration, it's a roadmap.