T212. Another Last Call: A Reading and Conversation with Sarabande Anthology Poets on Writing & Addiction
Thursday, February 8, 2024
1:45 pm to 3:00 pm
Death to the old cliché of the lush poet who destroys themselves and others in pursuit of their tortured genius. Here, four nationally-acclaimed poets from the Sarabande anthology, Another Last Call: Poems on Addiction & Deliverance, read their work and speak to writing and their experiences with (and near) addiction. This event celebrates the work of writers who have grappled, or are grappling with this disease, who do not glamorize addiction but instead live beside it, around it, through it.
This event will take place in person in the Kansas City Convention Center and will be livestreamed for virtual audiences. All livestreamed events include open captions and ASL interpretation.
Participants
Kaveh Akbar is the author of the novel Martyr! (Knopf) and two books of poetry, Pilgrim Bell (Graywolf) and Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James).
Paige Lewis is author of the poetry collection Space Struck (Sarabande Books, 2019) and co-editor of Last Call: Poems on Addiction and Recovery (Sarabande Books, 2023). Lewis co-created and curated the YouTube channel Ours Poetica with author John Green. Lewis’s poems have appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. They teach at the University of Iowa and in the low-residency program at Randolph College.
Joy Priest is the author of Horsepower (Pitt Poetry Series, 2020), winner of the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, and the editor of Once a City Said: A Louisville Poets Anthology (Sarabande, 2023). Her honors include a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Fine Arts Work Center fellowship, and the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from the American Poetry Review. She is an Assistant Professor of African American / African Diasporic Poetry in the MFA Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh and the Curator of Community Programs & Praxis at the Center for African American Poetry & Poetics.
