Join the Haymarket Book Club to take 50% off Everything!

Podcast

Breakbeat Poets Live: Chapter 2 (6-3-20)

The BreakBeat Poets Live is a virtual, multi-generational showcase of some of the illest writers on the planet rock. Hosted by Kevin Coval and Idris Goodwin, 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. --- 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. --- Idris Goodwin is the playwright, producer, educator, who coined the term “breakbeat poet.” He is the author of Can I Kick It? and the Pushcart–nominated collection These Are the Breaks. His publications also include Inauguration, cowritten with Nico Wilkinson, and Human Highlight: An Ode to Dominique Wilkins and This Is Modern Art, both cowritten with Kevin Coval. --------- Maya Marshall, a writer and editor, is co-founder of underbelly, the journal on the practical magic of poetic revision. Marshall has earned fellowships from MacDowell, Vermont Studio Center, Callaloo, The Watering Hole, and Cave Canem. She is the author of Secondhand (Dancing Girl Press, 2016) and a former senior editor for [PANK]. Her writing appears in Best New Poets 2019, Muzzle Magazine, RHINO, Blackbird, the Volta, and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago where she works as a manuscript editor for Haymarket Books. Her debut poetry collection All the Blood Involved in Love is forthcoming from Haymarket Books. --------- Mother Nature is the irresistible force of Klevah and TRUTH—emcees devoted to building a legacy founded on defiance and self-discovery. The Chicago-based duo is the answer for listeners seeking both substance and simplicity. As educators, they have mastered the ability to deliver weighty content through uplifting BARZ that pierce the conscience. With Peace and Love as their weapon and community at their foundation, these Gr8Thinkaz are on their way to provoking a pivotal shift in the next generation. --------- 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. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/L_xDzEE9_k4 Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

More Episodes

May 18, 2026

Ukraine’s Anti-Imperialist Struggle

February 24th marked the fourth anniversary of Russia’s imperialist invasion of Ukraine. Right now, it is bombing the country’s energy system, cutting off heat and electricity for millions in the depths of a bitterly cold winter. At the same time, the Trump administration is trying to bully Ukraine into a land for peace settlement that rewards Putin’s aggression and, with the willing collaboration of Ukraine’s oligarchs, puts the country up for sale to Western multinationals. Join this webinar to hear about Ukraine’s struggle.

Speakers:

Artem Chapeye is the author of Ordinary People Don’t Carry Guns (Washington Post 2025 best non-fiction) and The Ukraine. He is a writer, translator, activist, and, after the 2022 invasion, an enlisted member of the Armed Forces of Ukraine .

Tanya Vyhovsky is a Ukrainian American, Vermont State Senator, member of Vermont’s Progressive Party, and also a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Denys Bondar is a native of Ukraine and an associate professor of physics at Tulane University as well as a member of the Ukraine Solidarity Network and Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction.

May 18, 2026

We Are Each Other's Liberation: Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities

Join editors and contributors of We Are Each Other's Liberation, a major anthology that illuminates historical and contemporary solidarities between Black and Asian feminists.

A collaborative project between Black Women Radicals and the Asian American Feminist Collective, We Are Each Other's Liberation envisions a cross-racial and internationalist politics that explicitly addresses solidarity between Black and Asian feminists. Bringing together organizers, artists, journalists, poets, novelists, and more, this collection introduces readers to new ways of understanding and reflecting on race and feminism.

Drawing out lessons from the revolutionary work of movement forebearers—including the Combahee River Collective, Claudia Jones, Grace Lee Boggs, Yuri Kochiyama, and Third World Women’s Alliance as well as struggles today—We Are Each Other’s Liberation offers an urgent call for the just future we might build together.

Get a copy of We Are Each Other's Liberation from Haymarket: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2519-we-are-each-other-s-liberation

Speakers:

Rachel Kuo is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and cofounder of the Asian American Feminist Collective, which engages intersectional feminist politics grounded within Asian diasporic communities.

Jaimee A. Swift is the creator and executive director of Black Women Radicals, dedicated to uplifting and centering Black women and gender-expansive people’s radical activism in Africa and in the African diaspora.

TD Tso is a feminist writer, editor, cultural organizer, and cofounder of the Asian American Feminist Collective.

Pratibha Parmar’s films have shaped the politics of feminist, queer, and diasporic visual cultures for over four decades. From experimental shorts to activist documentaries and feature-length works, Parmar’s cinematic language operates as an act of visual justice. Her practice engages the image as a site of struggle—challenging the power relations that determine who is seen, how they are represented, and what forms of visual expression are made possible. Her films are a site of narrative transformation, where memory, activism, and artistic expression converge to resist erasure and imagine new futures. Pratibha is a published author and editor of of several anthologies. The Institute of Contemporary Arts (London) and Sming Sming Books published, Our Eyes as Commonly Tender: Visual Justice in the Filmmaking of Pratibha Parmar in 2025.

Margo Okazawa-Rey is an activist-educator working on issues of militarism for over 30 years. She has long-standing activist commitments in South Korea and Palestine, with Du Re Bang and Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counseling, respectively. She is a founding member of the International Women’s Network against Militarism and Women for Genuine Security, its US group. She also hosts feminist radio program Women’s Magazine, broadcast on KPFA Berkeley California station of the Pacifica Radio network, and is known as DJ MOR Love and Joy, transnational feminist virtual dance party DJ.

Dr. Beverley Bryan is a lifelong educator and political activist, who is co-author of the classic book Heart of the Race: Black Women’s Lives in Britain (1985) which detailed the experiences of Black women and their fight for equality from post-war up to 1980s Britain. Dr. Bryan was a founding member of the Brixton Black Women’s Group and the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD); a Saturday school organiser, a mainstream primary school teacher who pioneered Black history teaching in her classroom in the 1970s and a member of the British Black Panther Movement. A lifelong educator, Dr. Bryan is a retired Professor of Language Education from the University of the West Indies, Jamaica.

Support Haymarket's Work

In 2026, we’re celebrating 25 years of publishing “Books for Changing the World.” In those 25 years, we’ve helped build critical space and infrastructure for radical ideas and movements on the left to grow. That work of institution-building and popular political education has never been more necessary or more urgent. We need your help to continue to do this work.