Join the Pratt Library for a reading and conversation with poets Khadijah Queen and Justin Phillip Reed.

Khadijah Queen is the author of five books of poetry, most recently I'm So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On (YesYes Books, 2017), a finalist for the National Poetry Series, which was praised in O Magazine, The New Yorker, Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere as “quietly devastating,” and “a portrait of defiance that turns the male gaze inside out.” Earlier poetry collections include Conduit (Akashic / Black Goat, 2008), Black Peculiar (Noemi Press, 2011), and Fearful Beloved (Argos Books, 2015). Her newest collection, Anodyne, was published by Tin House Books in August 2020. Her verse play Non-Sequitur (Litmus Press, 2015) won the Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women's Performance Writing. The prize included a full staged production of the play at Theaterlab NYC from December 10 to December 20, 2015, by Fiona Templeton's The Relationship theater company.  Individual poems and prose appear in Poetry, Fence, Tin House, American Poetry Review, Buzzfeed, Gulf Coast, Poor Claudia, The Offing, jubilat, Memoir, Tupelo Quarterly, DIAGRAM, Lit Hub, New Delta Review, The Force of What's Possible, and elsewhere. Her 2019 op-ed on poetry and disability, co-edited with Jillian Weise, appeared in The New York Times.

Justin Phillip Reed is the winner of the 2018 National Book Award in Poetry for Indecency (Coffee House Press, 2018), which Library Journal called, “one of a kind brilliant.” The National Book Award poetry jury celebrated the book as “political and personal, tender, daring, and insightful,” and Vox praised it as “an unflinching exploration of power, race, sexuality, gender, the personal and the political.”  Reed is also the author of the chapbook A History of Flamboyance (YesYes Books, 2016). His newest book of poetry is The Malevolent Volume, which was published by Coffee House Press in April 2020. His poetry appears in African American Review, Best American Essays, Callaloo, The Kenyon Review, Obsidian, and elsewhere.

Purchase Khadijah Queen's most recent book here!

Purchase Justin Phillip Reed's most recent book here!

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Please email poetry@prattlibrary.org with questions about this event.

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