Join us tonight in celebration of the female imagination unbound as we continue to track the excavation and reimagination by women of traditional literary genres. Our reading features five writers who bring a variety of approaches to enlarging the breathing spaces that exist where body, body politic, and language meet. We are excited to have Portland poet Valerie Witte here to launch her new release, A Rupture in the Interiors (Arlie Press). Local writers Barbara Tomash (introducing her new book, Her Scant State), Nona Caspers (The Fifth Woman), Kimi Sugioka (Wile &Wing), and London Pinkney (NonWhite and Woman, anthology) will read recent works that leave fiction, nonfiction, poetry, prose, and song in (creative) disarray.

BIOS:

BuzzFeed called Nona Caspers’s The Fifth Woman a book “Queer Women (and everyone else) Should Read.” The Fifth Woman was a LAMBDA finalist and Indie Book of the Year silver and bronze medalist in literary fiction and queer fiction. Heavier than Air: Stories was a New York Times Editors' Choice. Nona teaches in the creative writing department at San Francisco State University and wanders the City’s neighborhoods and parks with her scruffy mutt Bora. London Pinkney, a writer and editor, is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Ana. She received an MFA from San Francisco State University. For her work in supporting the literary advancement of women, the Black community, and their intersections Pinkney was awarded the

Debra Plush Moore Scholarship in 2019. Her work can be read in publications including The Fem, Black Warrior Review, and the anthology NonWhite and Woman. Kimi Sugioka is a mother, educator, songwriter, and poet. She is the poet laureate of Alameda. Wile & Wing (Manic D Press) is her newest book, and she has also been published in numerous journals and anthologies. Most recently her work appears in the anthologies Beat Not Beat (Moon Tide Press) and Colossus:Body (Colossus Press). She loves cats and birds and believes that creating community through art is a revolutionary act.

Barbara Tomash is the author of five books of poetry including, most recently, Her Scant State (Apogee), PRE- (Black Radish), and Arboreal (Apogee); and two chapbooks Of Residue (Drop Leaf Press), and A Woman Reflected (palabrosa). Her writing has been a finalist for The Dorset Prize, the Colorado Prize, The Test Site Poetry Prize, and the Black Box Poetry Prize. She lives in Berkeley and teaches in the Creative Writing Department at San Francisco State University.

Valerie Witte is the author of multiple poetry and hybrid books, including a game of correspondence (Black Radish) and most recently, A Rupture in the Interiors (Airlie). Her two- part collaboration with Sarah Rosenthal exploring the work of postmodern dancer- choreographers Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer includes the books The Grass Is Greener When the Sun Is Yellow (Operating System) and the forthcoming One Thing Follows Another (punctum books). She currently edits education books in Portland where she lives with her husband Andrew.