Four poets gather for an IRL good old fashioned book reading. Featuring Karla Brundage, Ashia Ajani, Kevin Dublin, and Arthur Kayzakian

Karla Brundage is an Oakland poet, editor, essayist and beach lover. A recipient of a Fulbright Teacher Exchange she spent a year teaching in Zimbabwe and three years in Côte d'Ivoire where she founded West Oakland to West Africa Poetry Exchange. Her books Swallowing Watermelons and Mulatta-Not So Tragic (co-written with Allison Francis) reflect on mixed race identity, single parenting, and living with epilepsy. In 2020, her poem Alabama Dirt was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has performed her work onstage and online, and has published both nationally and internationally. Her work can be found at https://www.karlabrundage.com/. Her forthcoming book Blood Lies:Race Trait(or) is out in February and available at Finishing Line Press .

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 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. Their debut poetry collection, Heirloom (Write Bloody Publishing), is out now.

Kevin Dublin is an educator, economic justice advocate, and the author of Eulogy (Raven & Wren Press, 2023) and How to Fall in Love in San Diego (Finishing Line Press, 2017). He is the recipient of grants, fellowships, and awards from the SF Dream Keeper Initiative, San Francisco Arts Commission, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Center for Cultural Innovation, and Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. His work has recently appeared or forthcoming in Ploughshares, Konch, Apocrypha Magazine, The San Franciscan, Cincinnati Review, and several international poetry anthologies. He is the founder and director of The Living Room SF. Kevin believes in you and our collective power to change the world.

Arthur Kayzakian is the winner of the 2021 inaugural Black Lawrence Immigrant Writing Series for his collection, The Book of Redacted Paintings, which was also selected as a finalist for the 2021 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. He is the recipient of the 2023 creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is also the winner of the PS Straosse award for poems in Prairie Schooner and winner of the Open Chapbook Competition for his chapbook, My Burning City. He serves as the Poetry Chair for the International Armenian Literary Alliance (IALA). His work has appeared in several publications, including The Adroit Journal, Portland Review, Chicago Review, Cincinnati Review, The Southern Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Witness Magazine.