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
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More Episodes
Mar 2, 2023
American Sex Tape (poetry book launch)w/ Jameka Williams & Kemi Alabi
In American Sex Tape, Jameka Williams captures the reader’s gaze and stares right back. In this stunning debut collection, Williams offers a deeply personal investigation into how Americans (herself included) have been duped, buying into classism, sexism, and racist beauty ideals, while sacrificing self-love and self-determination. With whip-fast profanity and fiery humor, she charts a tender, exalting, and vibrant path to freedom from mirrors, stages, and screens.
Fiercely feminist, Black, American, and powerful, Williams speaks for a generation of obsessive social media influencers and consumers, revealing the complex ways in which we are actors and witnesses, and victims in our public and private performances. Though we may be permanent residents of this soulless cultural landscape, this stunning collection refuses to let it define us.
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Speakers:
Jameka Williams holds an MFA in poetry from Northwestern University. Her poetry has been published in Prelude Magazine, Muzzle Magazine, and Gulf Coast, among others. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she resides in Chicago, Illinois.
Kemi Alabi is a poet and culture worker from southeastern Wisconsin. They're the author of Against Heaven (Graywolf Press, 2022), selected by Claudia Rankine as winner of the Academy of American Poets First Book Award, and coeditor of The Echoing Ida Collection (Feminist Press, 2021). Alabi's work appears in The Atlantic, The Nation, Poetry, Boston Review, and has been supported through fellowships from Civitella Ranieri, MacDowell, Tin House, and Pink Door. They currently live in Chicago, Illinois.
This event is sponsored by Haymarket Books and University of Wisconsin Press.
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
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Mar 2, 2023
Freedom Dreams Episode 4 with Elleza Kelley & Robin D.G. Kelley
Join Robin D.G. Kelley for the Freedom Dreams discussion series. The fourth discussion features Elleza Kelley.
Freedom Dreams is a classic in the study of the Black radical tradition that has just been released in a new 20th anniversary edition. In this live event series, Robin D. G. Kelley will explore the connections between radical imagination and movements for social transformation with pathbreaking artists and scholars.
Speakers:
Elleza Kelley is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies and English at Yale University. Kelley works on African American literature, with an emphasis on black geographies and radical spatial practice in the United States. Her current research traces how black spatial knowledge and practice appear in literature and art, particularly through experimentations with form, genre, and media. Her first book project looks at practices of inscription and mark-making as modes of spatial production, representation, and reinvention. Her writing can be found in Antipode, The New Inquiry, Cabinet Magazine, and elsewhere.
Robin D.G. Kelley is Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA. He is the author of Hammer and Hoe, Race Rebels, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, and Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, among other titles. His writing has been featured in the Journal of American History, American Historical Review, Black Music Research Journal, African Studies Review, New York Times, The Crisis, The Nation, and Voice Literary Supplement.
Join the upcoming events in the Freedom Dreams Series: www.eventbrite.com/cc/freedom-drea…-kelley-1288129
Watch the live event recording: https://youtube.com/live/xQdu-7fpVbU
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: @haymarketbooks
Mar 7, 2023
No Winners in Nuclear War: Nuclear Power & the Military Industrial Complex
Joshua Frank's Atomic Days is an urgent look at the dark side of nuclear power. Hanford Nuclear Reservation, once the United States' largest plutonium production site, is now designated the most toxic place in America. We can't afford inaction: an accident at Hanford could make Chernobyl pale.
Joshua will be joined by peace activist Frida Berrigan and reporter Indigo Olivier for a discussion on nuclear proliferation and the antiwar movement. Frida's recent article, "The End of the World is Back: Why We Need a New Generation of Nuclear Abolitionists" calls on us to join the fight for nuclear disarmament. The world as we know it is at stake.
Buy Joshua's book, Atomic Days: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1940-atomic-days
Speakers:
Frida Berrigan is community activist and urban gardener living in New London, CT with her husband, three kids and six chickens. She is the author of It Runs In The Family: On Being Raised By Radicals and Growing Into Rebellious Motherhood (OR Books, 2015). Her writing appears regularly at TomDispatch.com and Waging Nonviolence.
Joshua Frank is an award-winning California-based journalist and co-editor of the political magazine CounterPunch. He is a co-author of several books, including The Big Heat: Earth on the Brink (AK Press) and Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America (Haymarket Books), which examines the ongoing environmental and human turmoil of the Hanford Nuclear site in Washington state.
Indigo Olivier is a reporter-researcher at The New Republic. Her writing on politics, labor, and higher education has appeared in The Guardian, The Nation, Jacobin, and In These Times, where she is a former investigative reporting fellow.
This event is sponsored by Haymarket Books and In These Times.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtube.com/live/Ghdh75MkNmA
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Mar 8, 2023
A Spectre Haunting: China Miéville on the Communist Manifesto
Join award-winning author China Miéville and New Yorker contributing writer E. Tammy Kim, for a discussion of Miéville’s latest book, "A Spectre, Haunting"
Few written works can so confidently claim to have shaped the course of history as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels's Manifesto of the Communist Party. Since first rattling the gates of the ruling order in 1848, this incendiary pamphlet has never ceased providing fuel for the fire in the hearts of those who dream of a better world. Nor has it stopped haunting the nightmares of those who sit atop the vastly unequal social system it condemns.
In A Spectre, Haunting, award-winning author China Miéville provides readers with a guide to understanding the Manifesto and the many specters it has conjured. Through his unique and unorthodox reading, Miéville offers a critical appraisal and a spirited defense of the modern world’s most influential political document.
For this launch event, Miéville will be joined by E. Tammy Kim for a conversation about contemporary capitalism’s rapidly multiplying crises and the Manifesto’s enduring relevance.
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Get A Spectre, Haunting from Haymarket Books:
https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1990-a-spectre-haunting
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Speakers:
China Miéville is the multi-award-winning author of many works of fiction and non-fiction. His fiction includes The City and the City, Embassytown and This Census-Taker. He has won the Hugo, World Fantasy, and Arthur C. Clarke awards. His non-fiction includes the photo-illustrated essay London’s Overthrow. He has written for various publications, including the New York Times, Guardian, Conjunctions and Granta, and he is a founding editor of the quarterly Salvage.
E. Tammy Kim is a contributing writer at The New Yorker and the co-host of the Time to Say Goodbye podcast. She's also the writer-in-residence at the A/P/A Institute at NYU, a contributing editor at Lux magazine, and a fellow at the Alicia Patterson Foundation and Type Media Center.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtube.com/live/PKwxKR5-QKU
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Apr 6, 2023
The Great Escape: Saket Soni and Naomi Klein In Conversation
Join Saket Soni and Naomi Klein for a launch event for The Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America.
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Saket Soni, a Delhi-born labor organizer, was in his late 20s and working in New Orleans when he began to receive mysterious calls from inside a heavily guarded Mississippi work camp. He knew immediately that the callers were in crisis. But he could not have imagined they were caught up in one of the largest human trafficking schemes in modern US history.
In his new book, THE GREAT ESCAPE: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America, Soni tells the stunning story of five hundred Indian workers who were held in those camps, their escape, and the years-long campaign for justice that followed—a fight Saket Soni engineered. Bringing to light the invisible migrant workforce that rebuilds after climate disasters, The Great Escape reveals the government and corporate corruption fueling a hidden struggle at the intersection of climate change, racial justice, and immigration.
For this launch event, Soni will be joined by internationally renowned author and activist Naomi Klein, to discuss migration policy in the U.S., the reality of twenty-first century trafficking, and the true costs of climate catastrophe.
Order a copy of The Great Escape from Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/1039/9781643750088
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Speakers:
Saket Soni is a labor organizer and human rights strategist working at the intersection of racial justice, migrant rights, and climate change. He is founder and director of Resilience Force, the voice of the rising workforce rebuilding America after climate disasters. Soni was profiled as an “architect of the next labor movement” in USA Today, chose as a 2022-23 Aspen Institute Fellow, and named one of Fast Company's Most Creative People in Business for 2022. His work was the subject of a major New Yorker feature story in November 2021.
Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, columnist, and international bestselling author of eight books including No Logo, The Shock Doctrine, This Changes Everything, No Is Not Enough and On Fire, which have been translated into over 35 languages. She is Senior Correspondent for The Intercept and an inaugural Marielle Franco fellow of the Social Justice Initiative Portal Project at the University of Chicago. In 2018, she was named the inaugural Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University, and is now Honorary Professor of Media and Climate at Rutgers. In September 2021, she joined the University of British Columbia as UBC Professor of Climate Justice and is the founding co-director of the UBC Centre for Climate Justice.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtube.com/live/APD7lLcYWGA
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
Apr 10, 2023
Freedom Dreams Episode 5 with Harsha Walia & Robin D.G. Kelley
Join Robin D.G. Kelley for the Freedom Dreams discussion series. The fifth discussion features Harsha Walia.
Freedom Dreams is a classic in the study of the Black radical tradition that has just been released in a new 20th anniversary edition. In this live event series, Robin D. G. Kelley will explore the connections between radical imagination and movements for social transformation with pathbreaking artists and scholars.
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Speakers:
Harsha Walia is the award-winning author of Undoing Border Imperialism (2013) and, most recently, Border and Rule (2021). Trained in the law, she is a community organizer and campaigner in migrant justice, anti-capitalist, feminist, and anti-imperialist movements, including No One Is Illegal and Women’s Memorial March Committee.
Robin D.G. Kelley is Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA. He is the author of Hammer and Hoe, Race Rebels, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, and Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, among other titles. His writing has been featured in the Journal of American History, American Historical Review, Black Music Research Journal, African Studies Review, New York Times, The Crisis, The Nation, and Voice Literary Supplement.
Watch the live event recording: https://youtube.com/live/wp-UBJT5DnQ
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks
