You're invited to Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon's Saturday, September 19, 2020 (3-6pm EST) Online Potluck Salon + Open Mic featuring STARR DAVIS, PATRICIA SPEARS JONES, PEGGY ROBLES-ALVARADO and London-based poet, ANDREENA LEEANNE! Co-hosted by JP HOWARD & CYNTHIA MANICK! Join us on Zoom. YOU MUST PRE-REGISTER IN ADVANCE ON ZOOM USING THIS LINK: https://bit.ly/3me1O85

#MUST #PRE-#REGISTER on #ZOOM

Sit down with your favorite meal/snack and beverage on Saturday, SEPTEMBER 19, 2020 from 3-6pm EST. Salon Curator JP Howard & Salon poet Cynthia Manick - Author, will co-host this Salon which features phenomenal poets from around the world. Our community and our writers are resilient and during these challenging times we come together in creative ways to celebrate that we are here, our voices are powerful and also to confirm that poetry shared is poetry that heals. JP Howard will begin by sharing a few writing prompts that you can use at a later time and then we will spend some time in small break-out room to check in with each other across the country/world. Our fierce featured poets will each share their powerful poetry. We will end with an open mic and will try to accommodate as many writers as we can. Depending on the turnout, we may not be able to accommodate everyone who wants to share during the open mic, but will try to fit as many writers in as possible this month. If not, join us next month! Each Open Mic poet/writer can ONLY share one poem or short other genre piece, no longer that 2 to 3 minutes MAX. Sign up here to receive invites to future Salons: http://eepurl.com/lNK0b

Donations to support Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon & JP Howard's community work are encouraged via:
PayPal to womenwritersbloom@gmail.com
Venmo to JPHoward_poet
Zelle to jph.poet@gmail.com
Cash App to $JPpoet
Donation link info here: https://bit.ly/2VHthTc

Bios below. Please order books by our featured poets and support their events (both virtual and IRL events in the future!) This event is sponsored in part by the Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC).

Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon (WWBPS) is a Literary Salon Series modeled after traveling Salons, popular during the Harlem Renaissance. Poet and author JP Howard has curated and nurtured the SALON for nine years! We are a forum offering writers, especially women, of all levels, a venue to come together in a positive and supportive space. WWBPS has a large LGBTQ BIPoC membership and is open to all. JP has been the recipient of Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC) grants for the Brooklyn-based portion of the Salon Series from 2014 through 2020. The Salon has been featured in The New York Times, Literary Hub, Poets & Writers Magazine, Bryant Park Word for Word Reading Series, CUNY TV's Study With the Best cable tv show, and more. Follow Bloom on Twitter and Instagram @WomenWriteBloom and on Facebook at Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon.

BIOS of OUR FEATURED POETS:

STARR DAVIS is a poet, essayist, playwright, and professional writer whose work has been featured in multiple literary magazines such as Kenyon Review, The Rumpus, So to Speak Journal, and Transition Magazine. She is the Creative Nonfiction Editor for Triquarterly Magazine. She currently lives in Houston, Texas. https://www.starrdavis.com/

PATRICIA SPEARS JONES is a poet, educator, cultural activist, anthologist and recipient of 2017 Jackson Poetry Prize and is author of A Lucent Fire New and Selected Poems and 3 other collections and five chapbooks. She co-edited the groundbreaking anthology, Ordinary Women: An Anthology of New York City Women (1978) and THINK: Poems for Aretha Franklin’s Inauguration Day Hat (2009). Her poems are widely anthologized and is forthcoming in Lift Every Voice: Why African American Poetry Matters Today, and recent work is published in The New Yorker and The Brooklyn Rail. She curated programs at The Poetry Project of St. Marks Church and created WORDS Sunday series in Brooklyn. She has taught Creative Writing at Hunter College, Barnard College, Adelphi University and Hollins University as the 2020 Louis D. Rubin Writer in Residence. She has taught summer poetry workshops at Community of Writers, Fine Arts Work Center, Naropa, Rutgers University, Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill and Wild Seeds Workshop for Medgar Evers College. She has taught workshops at St. Mark’s Poetry Project, Poets House, Brooklyn Poets, Cave Canem, and at branches of the New York Public Library and the Brooklyn Public Library. She is Emeritus Fellow for Black Earth Institute and organizer of the American Poets Congress. https://psjones.com

ANDREENA LEEANNE Andreena Leeanne, age 39, is an out and proud Black working-class Lesbian Poet & Inspirational Speaker from London. She writes and performs poetry to come to terms with and speak out about her personal experiences with homelessness, mental health, childhood sexual abuse & the many other challenges she has faced in her life. By speaking her truth, she hopes to inspire and empower others to speak their truth and take action. Check out her debut collection CHARRED on Amazon. In January 2015 Andreena founded Poetry LGBT Open Mic Night. Poetry LGBT is a warm and welcoming space for the LGBTQ+ community to come together to share their experiences through poetry and spoken word. It is a vital and much needed space for the LGBTQ+ community to share, create and express themselves. Andreena facilitates these sessions live at physical venues and online. Instagram: @Survivor.Andreena.Leeanne Follow @PoetryLGBT on Instagram

Peggy Robles-Alvarado is a Dominican and Puerto Rican tenured educator with advanced degrees in elementary, bilingual education, and an MFA in Performance Studies. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, 2020 Atticus Review Poetry Contest winner, and a BRIO award winner. She has received fellowships from CantoMundo, Homeschool, Desert Nights Rising Stars, The Frost Place, and VONA. She is also a three-time International Latino Book Award winner who authored Conversations With My Skin (2011), and Homage To The Warrior Women (2012). Through Robleswrites Productions, she created The Abuela Stories Project (2016) and Mujeres, The Magic, The Movement, and The Muse (2017). Her poetry appears in several anthologies such as Escape Wheel (2020), The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext (2020), What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump (2019), and Soul Sister Revue: A Poetry Compilation (2019). For more please visit Robleswrites.com.

ABOUT YOUR CO-HOSTS JP HOWARD & CYNTHIA MANICK:

JP Howard is an author, educator, literary activist, curator and community builder. Her debut poetry collection, SAY/MIRROR (The Operating System & Liminal Lab), was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. She is also the author of bury your love poems here (Belladonna*/Belladonna Books) and co-edited Sinister Wisdom Journal Black Lesbians--We Are the Revolution! JP is a 2020 featured author in Lambda Literary’s LGBTQ Writers in Schools program and was a Split This Rock Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism finalist. She is featured in the Lesbian Poet Trading Card Series from Headmistress Press. JP has received fellowships and grants from Cave Canem, VONA, Lambda, and the Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC). JP’s poetry and/or essays have appeared or are forthcoming in The Slowdown Podcast, The Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day Series, Apogee Journal, The Feminist Wire, Split this Rock, Muzzle Magazine, and others. Her poetry is widely anthologized. JP is the Editor-at-Large at Mom Egg Review VOX and curates Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon, a NY based forum offering writers a monthly venue to collaborate. http://www.jp-howard.com

Cynthia Manick - Author is the author of Blue Hallelujahs (Black Lawrence Press) and editor of Soul Sister Revue: A Poetry Compilation (Jamii Publishing, 2019). She has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, MacDowell Colony, and Château de la Napoule among others. Winner of the Lascaux Prize in Collected Poetry, Manick was awarded Honorable Mention for the 2019 Furious Flower Poetry Prize. She is Founder of the reading series Soul Sister Revue; and her poem "Things I Carry Into the World" was made into a film by Motionpoems, an organization dedicated to video poetry, and has debuted on Tidal for National Poetry Month. A performer at literary festivals, libraries, universities, and most recently the Brooklyn Museum, Manick’s work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day Series, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. She currently serves on the Editorial Board of Alice James Books. http://www.cynthiamanick.com/

Join us on Zoom. REGISTER IN ADVANCE USING THIS LINK: https://bit.ly/3me1O85 !!!!

Any issues registering, contact JP at: jp.howard@womenwritersbloom.com

JP WILL PROVIDE A FEW WRITING PROMPTS AT THE START OF THIS EVENT FOR YOU TO USE AT A LATER TIME. Come with pen/paper/computer to write them down.

#OPEN MIC: This Salon ends with a MULTI-GENRE Open Mic open to all participants, so please bring one poem or short other genre piece no longer than 2 to 3 mins MAX. We have no idea how many folks will register, so not everyone may get a chance to join the open mic this month, but the Salon will return next month (online) if we are still quarantined or IRL (in real life) if we are no longer quarantined. Sign up here to receive invites to future Salons: http://eepurl.com/lNK0b