The BreakBeat Poets Live! is a virtual, multi-generational showcase of some of the illest writers on the planet rock. Each chapter features writers and performers who are part of the Haymarket Books family.
While all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able make a solidarity donation in support of our continuing to do this important work.
Penelope Alegria is the 2019 Chicago Youth Poet Laureate and a two-time member of Young Chicago Authors’ artistic apprenticeship, Louder Than a Bomb Squad. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in La Nueva Semana, El Beisman, Muse/A Journal, The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext, as well as BBC Radio 4 and WBEZ Radio Archives. She is a Brain Mill Press Editor’s Pick, and she was awarded the 2018 Literary Award by Julian Randall and both the 2019 and 2020 Poetry Award by the Niles West English Department. She has performed spoken word at the Obama Foundation Summit, Pitchfork Music Festival, and other venues in the Chicagoland area. She started at Harvard College in the fall of 2020.
Nilah Foster is considered a part of the queer black youth that comes from the far south side of Chicago and represents it all with her pen. She was a Louder Than A Bomb Indy finalist of 2019 and Indy winner of 2020 which also allowed her to be a part of the bombsquad 2019 and 2020 cohort. But nothing serves a better medium of learning about her than from her writing where she interrogates her own truths and where she and the audience learn together.
E’Mon Lauren is from the South Side of Chicago. She is a Scorpio enthusiast and a firm believer in Dorthy Dandridge reincarnation. E’mon uses poetry and playwriting to explore a philosophy of hood womanism. She was named Chicago’s first Youth Poet Laureate. A former Kuumba Lynx Performance Ensemble slam team member and Louder Than a Bomb champion, E’mon has performed in many venues including The Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Festival and The Chicago Hip Hop Theatre Fest. She was a 2016 finalist for The Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Award. E’mon has been published in The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, The Down Dirty Word, and elsewhere. She has been featured in Chicago Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, and on WGN Radio. She is a member of Young Chicago Authors Teaching Artist Corps.
José Olivarez is the son of Mexican immigrants. His book, Citizen Illegal, won of the 2018 Chicago Review of Books Poetry Prize and was named a top book of 2018 by NPR.
He holds fellowships from CantoMundo, Poets House, and the Bronx Council on the Arts. Olivarez was awarded the Author and Artist in Justice award from the Phillips Brooks House Association and named a Debut Poet of 2018 by Poets & Writers. He is a recipient of the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation.
Jamila Woods is an activist, award-winning poet, and singer/songwriter whose inspirations include Gwendolyn Brooks and Toni Morrison, as well as Erykah Badu and Kendrick Lamar. As a solo artist, she specializes in an accessible yet non-commercial form of R&B that is rooted in soul and wholly modern, which can be heard on her albums HEAVN (2016) and LEGACY! LEGACY! (2019). She is also the co-editor of The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic.
Kevin Coval is a poet and author of A People’s History of Chicago and over ten other collections, anthologies, and chapbooks. He is the founder and editor of the BreakBeat Poets series for Haymarket Books, artistic director for Young Chicago Authors, and the founder of Louder than a Bomb: The Chicago Youth Poetry Festival.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/NPvZi_3U_ZE
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
More Episodes
Jan 28, 2022
US Labor on the Move: The Fights Ahead in 2022
Join Haymarket and Labor Notes for a discussion about some of the key labor fights ahead in 2022.
As the coronavirus crisis continues to rock the US working class, and as corporate profits soar, organized workers are gearing up for some of the biggest fights in years, both in the workplace and in their unions. In 2022, the United Auto Workers will hold their first direct elections for top leadership after years of corruption and concessions, and gear up for the Big Three auto negotiations in 2023; the Teamsters will inaugurate new reform leadership and launch their UPS contract campaign, covering the largest private sector union contract in the country; and UFCW members on the west coast begin a coordinated contract campaign covering 100,000 grocery workers. Hear from member leaders from each of these fights on how organized workers are fighting back across the country, and learn more about the next potential flashpoints in the US labor movement.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Speakers:
Dave Bernt, UPS Teamster
Michael Cannon, UAW
Kyong Barry, UFCW
Moderator: Jonah Furman, Labor Notes
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This event is sponsored by Labor Notes and Haymarket Books.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/he072L7Rcxw
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Jan 31, 2022
Speaking Out of Place: A Conversation w/ Robin DG Kelley & David Palumbo-Liu
Join David Palumbo-Liu and Robin D. G. Kelley for an urgent discussion of Palumbo-Liu's new book and the politics of our moment.
Joined renowned scholars and activists David Palumbo-Liu and Robin D. G. Kelley as they discuss Palumbo-Liu's urgent new book Speaking Out of Place. Speaking Out of Place asks us to reconceptualize both what we think “politics” is, and our relationship to it. Especially at this historical moment, when it is all too possible we will move from Trump’s fascistic regime to Biden’s anti-progressive centrism. We need ways to build off the tremendous growth we have seen in democratic socialism, and to gather strength and courage for the challenges, and opportunities that lie ahead.
As Nick Estes said of the book, “It’s not enough to be against the rising tide of authoritarianism and climate chaos. David Palumbo-Liu examines how only through “a positive obsession with justice” and a collective willingness to learn to speak a new language and remake the places do we have a chance at saving the planet and building the world we all need.”
Get the book, Speaking Out of Place, from Haymarket: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1797-speaking-out-of-place
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Speakers:
David Palumbo-Liu is a professor of comparative literature at Stanford University. He is on the organizing collectives of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and the Campus Antifascist Network. His writings have appeared in The Guardian, Jacobin, Truthout, Al Jazeera, The Nation, and other venues.
Robin D.G. Kelley is Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA and the author of many books, including Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class, and Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/M4pvbiS1C3k
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Feb 4, 2022
Defend Roe! No Abortion Bans! Defend & Extend Abortion Access!
Join us for a conversation on the fight to defend abortion rights in honor of the anniversary of the historic Roe v. Wade decision.
January 22nd is the 49th anniversary of the historic 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that decriminalized abortion, a decision that now is on the chopping block after decades of rulings that have limited access to abortion. The Supreme Court is reviewing a Mississippi 15-week abortion ban case while it has allowed Texas to outlaw abortion after just six weeks and empower vigilantes to enforce its ban. All are designed to roll back if not overturn Roe all together.
How can we mobilize the majority that still defends Roe?
Speakers:
Dr. Barbara Roberts, MD has been a leader in the abortion rights movement for over 50 years. She witnessed first-hand the horrors of illegal abortion before Roe v Wade made abortion legal in 1973. She helped found the Women’s National Abortion Action Coalition (WONAAC) and was the keynote speaker at the first national pro-choice demonstration in Washington DC in November 1971. Dr. Roberts was the first female cardiologist in the state of Rhode Island, and is the author of several books, including How To Keep From Breaking Your Heart: What Every Woman Needs to Know About Cardiovascular Disease
Derenda Hancock is co-coordinator of the Pinkhouse Defenders, volunteers who create a safe environment for patients of "The Pinkhouse," aka Jackson Women's Health Organization, the target of the lawsuit to overturn Roe now before the Supreme Court. She is a co-founder of WeEngage, a non-profit that works to advance an abortion-positive change in our culture, supporting education and engagement of the public using factual unbiased information about abortion, abortion access legislation, and the truth about what is happening outside abortion clinics when people come to their appointments.
Qudsiyyah Shariyf (she/they) is a fierce advocate for reproductive justice and a full-spectrum birthworker. They strive to embody and practice an unapologetically Black, queer, feminist, and anti-capitalist politic. At the core of Qudsiyyah’s passion for reproductive justice is an understanding of all people’s inherent worth and a sense of duty to fight for dignity, respect, and self-determination for all marginalized people. As the Program Manager with Chicago Abortion Fund she oversees the helpline that directly connects hundreds of people to abortion care through financial, logistical, and emotional support.
Kim Varela-Broxson (she/her) is an abortion fund volunteer with the Bridge Collective, reproductive nonprofit worker at the National Network of Abortion Funds, and a member of Austin DSA.
Gina Rozman-Wendle (moderator), President of the Chicago Chapter of the National Organization for Women (CNOW). CNOW strives to be Chicago’s intersectional feminist resource in the areas of economic equity, women’s health, reproductive freedom, ending violence against women, and LGBTQ+ rights. CNOW is committed to driving bold, relevant change for Chicago women and girls by dismantling oppressive systems and building an inclusive community of activists.
This event is sponsored by Chicago for Abortion Rights and Haymarket Books. All donations from this event will go to the Chicago Abortion Fund.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/CWzkc2Ibpx8
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Feb 10, 2022
The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting A Writer’s Life in Prison (Book Launch)
Join PEN America and Haymarket Books for the launch of The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting a Writer’s Life In Prison.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Sentences That Create Us provides a road map for incarcerated people and their allies to have a thriving writing life behind bars—and shared beyond the walls—that draws on the unique insights of more than fifty contributors, most themselves justice-involved, to offer advice, inspiration and resources. And it's not just for those on the inside. Michelle Alexander said in her blurb: “This is one of the best books on writing that I've ever read.” This transformative collection can serve anyone seeking hard won lessons and inspiration for their own creative—and human—journey.
Join editor Caits Meissner for a conversation with contributor Reginald Dwayne Betts, hosted by author Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.
Order the book from Haymarket: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1766-the-sentences-that-create-us
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Speakers:
Reginald Dwayne Betts is the founder of Freedom Reads, a first-of-its-kind organization working to radically transform access to literature in prison.
In October 2018, the New York Times Magazine published Betts long essay “Getting Out.” Several months later, the piece was awarded a National Magazine Award. The publication was another example of Betts entering into a new genre and bringing the same depth and richness of self-reflection and exploration of the central problem of this generation: incarceration and its effects of families and communities.
Betts transformed himself from a sixteen-year old kid sentenced to nine-years in prison to a critically acclaimed writer and graduate of the Yale Law School. He has written three acclaimed collections of poetry, the recently published Felon, Bastards of the Reagan Era and Shahid Reads His Own Palm.
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is the New York Times-bestselling author of Friday Black. Originally from Spring Valley, New York, he graduated from SUNY Albany and went on to receive his MFA from Syracuse University.His work has appeared or is forthcoming from numerous publications, including the New York Times Book Review, Esquire, Literary Hub, the Paris Review, Guernica, and Longreads. He was selected by Colson Whitehead as one of the National Book Foundation's “5 Under 35” honorees, is the winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award for Best First Book and the Aspen Words Literary Prize.
He is on the steering committee of the Rockland Coalition to end the New Jim Crow an advocacy group that works toward ending the use of the criminal justice system as a tool of racial oppression.
Caits Meissner is the director of Prison and Justice Writing at PEN America. She has taught, consulted, and co-created extensively for over 15 years across a wide spectrum of communities with a focus on prisons, public schools, and college classrooms at The New School and The City College of New York. In 2017, Meissner reenvisioned the concept of book tour for her illustrated poetry collection Let It Die Hungry, pairing public speaking engagements with opportunities to work with incarcerated writers across the United States.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/4PC_M5USHJQ
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Feb 15, 2022
Abolition. Feminism. Now. w/ Angela Davis, Mariame Kaba, Gina Dent, Erica Meiners & Beth Richie
Join Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent, Erica R. Meiners, and Beth E. Richie for an urgent conversation moderated by Mariame Kaba.
As a politic and a practice, abolition increasingly shapes our political moment — halting the construction of new jails and propelling movements to divest from policing. Yet erased from this landscape are not only the central histories of feminist — usually queer, anti-capitalist, grassroots, and women of color — organizing that continue to cultivate abolition but a recognition of the stark reality: abolition is our best response to endemic forms of state and interpersonal gender and sexual violence. Amplifying the analysis and the theories of change generated from vibrant community based organizing, Abolition. Feminism. Now. surfaces necessary historical genealogies, key internationalist learnings, and everyday practices to grow our collective and flourishing present and futures.
Get the book, Abolition. Feminism. Now.: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1546-abolition-feminism-now
This event is free but please donate money (even $5 makes a difference), learn from and with, and support grassroots organizations which are making the world we need, now. For example - support Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project (https://p-nap.org/donate/); Love & Protect (https://loveprotect.org/); Critical Resistance (http://criticalresistance.org/).
Speakers:
Angela Y. Davis is Professor Emerita of History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies at UC Santa Cruz. An activist, writer, and lecturer, her work focuses on prisons, police, abolition, and the related intersections of race, gender, and class. She is the author of many books, from Angela Davis: An Autobiography (now available in a new edition from Haymarket Books) to Freedom Is a Constant Struggle.
Gina Dent (Ph.D., English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University) is Associate Professor of Feminist Studies, History of Consciousness, and Legal Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Currently, she is Faculty Fellow at the UCSC Institute of the Arts and Sciences, working as a consultant for the Barring Freedom exhibition (San José Museum of Art) and as co-convener of the Visualizing Abolition series of events, which includes the video collection Music for Abolition (https://visualizingabolition.ucsc.edu).
Erica R. Meiners is a professor of education and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Northeastern Illinois University. A writer, organizer, and educator, Meiners is the author For the Children? Protecting Innocence in a Carceral State, coauthor of The Feminist and the Sex Offender: Confronting Sexual Harm, Ending State Violence, and a coeditor of The Long Term: Resisting Life Sentences, Working Toward Freedom.
Beth E. Richie is Head of the Department of Criminology, Law and Justice and Professor of Black Studies at The University of Illinois at Chicago. The emphasis of her scholarly and activist work has been on the ways that race/ethnicity and social position affect women’s experience of violence and incarceration, focusing on the experiences of African American battered women and sexual assault survivors. Dr. Richie is the author of Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence and America’s Prison Nation, which chronicles the evolution of the contemporary anti-violence movement during the time of mass incarceration in the United States and numerous articles concerning Black feminism and gender violence, race and criminal justice policy, and the social dynamics around issues of sexuality, prison abolition, and grassroots organizations in African American Communities.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/xvJCjh9ZbRM
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Feb 23, 2022
Building Palestine Solidarity after the Bowman Affair
Join us for a discussion on how to build solidarity with Palestine and escalate the BDS movement in the wake of the Bowman Affair.
Israel’s war on Gaza last May sparked protest and support for the Palestinian struggle for liberation throughout the world including in the US. The Republicans and Democrats have tried to counter this groundswell of solidarity by demonizing and criminalizing the movement for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS). Many progressive politicians including DSA member Jamaal Bowman bowed to this Zionist pressure, opposed BDS, and voted for military aid to Israel. Join this webinar to discuss how we must reaffirm solidarity with Palestine and escalate the BDS movement in the wake of the Bowman Affair.
Speakers:
Tithi Bhattacharya. She is on the editorial board of Spectre, editor of Social Reproduction Theory, and co-author of Feminism for the 99%. She is a long time Palestine solidarity and BDS activist.
Rabab Abdulhadi. She is the founding Director and Senior Scholar of the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies at San Francisco State University. She is a long time community organizer focused on the struggle for Palestinian liberation and the indivisibility of anti-colonial and anti-racist movements.
brian bean. They are a Chicago-based socialist, one of the founding editors of Rampant Magazine, and a member of the Tempest Collective. They are the co-editor and contributor to Palestine: A Socialist Introduction and their writing has appeared in Jacobin, Spectre Journal, Red Flag, International Viewpoint, New Politics, and others.
Haley Pessin. She is a socialist activist based in New York. She is a rank and file member of 1199 SEIU, DSA Afrosocialist Caucus, and the Tempest Collective.
This event is sponsored by Spectre Journal and Haymarket Books.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/j4iy6kJ-2kk
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
