Three authors read poetry and creative nonfiction that speaks to our moment. Samina will read from her debut memoir-in-essays and Sara will read from her award-winning poetry collection. Deema will read from the new edition of Water to Water: Gaza Renga, coauthored with Jewish American poet Marilyn Hacker. The readings will be followed by a Q&A and book signing.

Samina Najmi is a professor of English at California State University, Fresno. Her memoir-in-essays, Sing Me a Circle: Love, Loss, and a Home in Time, won the Aurora Polaris Award in Creative Nonfiction and was published Oct 1 by Trio House Press. It has received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and is featured among Poets & Writers’ five creative nonfiction debuts of the year. Samina is enrolled part-time in Fresno State’s MFA program in creative nonfiction, and this is keeping her humble. Daughter of multiple migrations, Samina has lived in Fresno since 2006 and watched with wonder her children, her students, and her citrus grow. Deema K. Shehabi is a Palestinian-American poet, essayist, and editor. Deema is the author of Thirteen Departures from the Moon and co-editor with Beau Beausoleil of Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, for which she received a Northern California Book Award. She’s also co-author of Water to Water with Marilyn Hacker and winner of the Nazim Hikmet poetry competition in 2018. Deema’s work has appeared in poets.org, Los Angeles Review of Books, Prairie Schooner, The Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and in the anthologies Heaven Looks like Us and Ask the Night for a Dream.

SARA BORJAS is a Xicanx pocha, a Fresno poet and a poetry editor at Noemi Press. Her debut collection of poetry, Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff was published by Noemi Press in 2019 and won a 2020 American Book Award. Sara was named one of Poets & Writers 2019 Debut Poets and has received fellowships from MacDowell, CantoMundo, The Poetry Foundation and others. Her work can be found in AGNI, The LA Times, and The Rumpus, amongst others. She teaches down ass undergraduates at CSU East Bay and will resist white supremacy and settler colonialism until Black liberation is realized and Palestine is free. Sara lives in Oakland and stays rooted in Fresno.