S248. Breaking Fast with Words: Five Years of Poetry-a-Day for Ramadan

Room 5 & 6, Tampa Convention Center, First Floor
Saturday, March 10, 2018
3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

 

For five years, a dedicated group of mostly Muslim writers has been using the holy month of Ramadan—a time of spiritual reflection through fasting—to forge a vibrant online community. The daily poems—on everything from microaggression-fueled rage to fasting "stank" breath—cultivate humanity for a people dehumanized by the current mainstream. This reading will feature regular contributors to the group, and a discussion about building writing communities that also function as sites of resistance


Participants

Moderator:

Taz is an activist, storyteller, and politico. She cohosts #GoodMuslimBadMuslim Podcast and was honored in 2016 as a White House Champion of Change for AAPI Art and Storytelling. She is published in Modern Loss; Good Girls Marry Doctors; Love, Inshallah; and Coiled Serpent.

Serena W. Lin's short stories have appeared in Drunken Boat, cream city review, Hyphen, and Northern New England Review. She practiced first as a public defender then a community lawyer for nearly a decade in Los Angeles. She was a Truman Capote fellow in fiction at Rutgers-Newark and is VONA alum.

Kirin Khan is a fiction writer/poet based in Oakland, California. A 2016 VONA Voices alum, 2017 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow, and 2017 Grotto Fellow, her work has appeared in many publications, including Uproot, sPARKLE & bLINK, Your Impossible Voice, and 7x7.LA. Kirin is working on her first novel.

Ramy Eletreby is a queer Muslim Arab American writer, performer, educator-facilitator in Los Angeles, California. Though he primarily works with youth, Ramy facilitates creative projects based in social justice with various communities throughout the greater Los Angeles region.

Faisal Mohyuddin teaches English at Highland Park High School (IL) and has an MFA from Columbia College Chicago. The recipient of the 2014 Edward Stanley Award from Prairie Schooner, his work also appears in Crab Orchard Review, Poet Lore, Narrative, RHINO, Painted Bride Quarterly, and elsewhere.

#AWP24

February 7–10, 2024
Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City Convention Center