White Whale is proud to host an exceptional evening featuring contributors Yona Harvey, Cynthia Manick and Yvonne McBride.
About The Future of Black:
This groundbreaking collection highlights work from poets who have written verse within this growing tradition, including Terrance Hayes, Lucille Clifton, Gill Scott-Heron, A. Van Jordan, Glenis Redmond, Tracy K. Smith, Teri Ellen Cross Davis, Joshua Bennett, Douglas Kearney, Tara Betts, Frank X Walker, Tyree Daye, and others. In addition, the anthology will also feature the work of artists such as John Jennings and Najee Dorsey, showcasing their interpretations of superheroes, Black comic characters, Afrofuturistic images from the African diaspora.
About the contributors:
Yona Harvey is an American poet and recipient of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award for her first poetry collection, Hemming the Water. Her second poetry collection, You Don’t Have to Go to Mars for Love, is available now from Four Way Books and wherever books are sold. She is also among the first black women to write for Marvel Comics. She won the inaugural Lucille Clifton Legacy Award in poetry from St. Mary’s College of Maryland and the Carol R. Brown Achievement Award from the Heinz Foundation. Yona’s work has been published and anthologized in many publications including Letters to the Future: Black WOMEN / Radical WRITING, A Poet’s Craft: A Comprehensive Guide to Making and Sharing Your Poetry and The Force of What’s Possible: Accessibility and the Avant-Garde. She contributed to Marvel’s World of Wakanda with Ta-Nehisi Coates and Roxane Gay, followed by a collaboration with Coates on Black Panther & The Crew. Her interests and writings in nonfiction recently led her to teach a workshop for Creative Nonfiction magazine: “Writing Away the Stigma for Young Adults,” designed for teens writing about their mental health experiences.
Cynthia Manick is the author of Blue Hallelujahs, which won the 2016 Lascaux Prize in Collected Poetry, and editor of Soul Sister Revue: A Poetry Compilation (2019). She has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, and MacDowell Colony. Her website is www.cynthiamanick.com.
Yvonne McBride is a fiction, poetry and freelance writer based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her work explores the identity, folklore, cultural legacy, and collective memories of African Americans and people of the African Diaspora. She has received fellowships from MacDowell, Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, and Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, and support from the Hurston/Wright, Callaloo, and Sewanee writing communities.
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