“Gwen Nell Westerman is the author of Follow the Blackbirds (Michigan State University Press, 2013), a poetry collection written in Dakota and English. The Poet Laureate of Minnesota, she is a Professor at Minnesota State University, Mankato, and lives in rural Blue Earth County.” - from Poets.org
Joseph A. Dandurand is a Kwantlen Aboriginal poet and playwright, whose work extends into archeology. His plays include “Where Two Rivers Meet” and “Shake”, and his poetry is anthologized in three collections, including “dead and scratching for the poor”. His poem “Unlike Any Other Day” is rooted in the west coast landscape Dandurand calls home, tying the long, deep history of his people, both tragic and triumphant, to the land itself.
Consider the place you live. What connects you to it? What makes it your home?
Love, Hate, and Other Filters tells the story of seventeen-year-old Maya Aziz, an Indian-American-Muslim high school student. Maya struggles against her parent's wishes of having her marry a proper Muslim boy and of attending a nearby college in Chicago versus her own wishes of going to film school in New York and pursuing the boy she is interested in. Amidst this, she must battle Islamaphobia in the aftermath of a horrific terrorist attack that reveals the bigotry that was lying just under the surface of her hometown.
Samira Ahmed was born in Bombay, India and grew up in Illinois. After graduating from the University of Chicago, she taught English in high schools and become an advocate of funding for public schools. Love, Hate, and Other Filters was her first novel and received numerous awards including a Seventeen Magazine Best YA Book of 2018, a School Library Journal Best Book of 2018, and a Goodreads Choice Awards Semifinalist in 2018.
Share about a time where you and your parents disagreed on your future.
These Violent Delights is a re-telling of Romeo and Juliet set in 1920's Shanghai amidst two feuding gangs, the Scarlet Gang led by Juliette Cai and the White Flowers led by their heir, Roma Montagov. However, when a mysterious sickness tears through Shanghai, Juliette and Roma must put aside their differences to save their home city before a Monster, and their feelings for each other, devours them all.
Chloe Gong wrote These Violent Delights while studying English and International Relations at the University of Pennsylvannia. These Violent Delights was listed as a ALA/YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults - Top Ten book as well as a Buzzfeed Best Young Adult Book of 2020. Its sequel, Our Violent Ends was released in November 2021.
What reimagining of a Shakespeare story have you enjoyed?
I Believe in a Thing Called Love tells the story of hard-working high school senior, Desi Lee, who is successful in all her academic pursuits, but has never had a boyfriend. Determined to capture the heart of her crush, Luca, Desi decides to do what she does best, study. Desi creates her "K Drama Rules for True Love" and attempts to win Luca over through imitating techniques and tropes found in Korean Dramas.
Maurene Goo has written several YA novels including Somewhere Only We Know and The Way You Make Me Feel. She has also written for the Silk series in the Marvel universe. I Believe in a Thing Called Love was a Kirkus Best Teen Books of the Year, NPR Best Book of the Year, and Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year.
If you could recommend one non-English TV show for a friend to watch, what would it be?
Frankly in Love tells the story of Frank Li, a Korean-American, who feels disconnected from his Korean heritage. Despite this, his parents still expect him to only date Korean girls, but Frank has fallen in love with Brit, who is white. Frank's friend, Joy Song, also has a similar problem with managing her parent's expectations of only dating Korean boys while she is dating someone who is Chinese. Together, Frank and Joy hatch a plan to fake-date each other to fool their parents and to allow them to follow their hearts. What could go wrong? [Content Warning: Mature language and at least one instance of mature subject matter]
David Yoon is married to novelist Nicola Yoon, the author of Everything, Everything and The Sun Is Also a Star. Frankly in Love was a William C. Morris Award finalist, an APALA Honour Book, and a Junior Library Guild Selection.
Have you ever had any expectations placed upon you about dating and race?
The Astonishing Colour of After tells the story of Leigh Chen Sanders who must reconcile with her mother's suicide. Convinced that her mother has turned into a bird, Leigh visits Taiwan, and her maternal grandparents, for the first time to explore her mother's history and her family's story. Leigh's grief takes the reader on a journey through family, love, and loss as Leigh must figure out the difference between what is magic and what is real.
Emily X.R. Pan is of Chinese and Taiwanese descent. Her website states that she plays bluegrass mandolin, teaches yoga, and, until recently, thought she hated Reese's peanut butter cups. The Astonishing Colour of After won the ALPA Honor Award, the Walter Honor Award, and was long-listed for the Carneige Medal.
How have you dealt with grief in the past?
What are the lessons that have been passed down to you? Explore those lessons in the form of a poem.
Hailing from Vancouver, Raoul Fernandes won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize in 2016 for his debut collection of poems, Transmitter and Receiver. His early childhood was spent in Dubai, U.A.E., which he has spoken of being influential through the “sparseness of the desert landscape, the tension between the many groups of people there. The muezzin chanting in the evenings.” He moved to Tsawwassen in 1993, where he was led to poetry through music. His poem, “When the Teeth of the Gears Meet” confronts the mechanistic nature of our lives and interactions, and a desire to escape.
Citizen by Claudia Rankine is a mixed media book. A collection of poetry, images and other art. She examines the Black experience from the second person, along with an updating list of names for the Black lives lost due to police brutality. “You are in the dark, in the car...” puts us in the perspective of a Black American living life in vignettes separated with a slash. Write a scenario using the second person about a personal experience.
April 2 is the first day of the Muslim holy month of fasting.
From the Quran, "The month of Ramadan is that in which was revealed the Quran; a guidance for mankind, and clear proofs of the guidance, and the criterion (of right and wrong). And whosoever of you is present, let him fast the month, and whosoever of you is sick or on a journey, a number of other days. Allah desires for you ease; He desires not hardship for you; and that you should complete the period, and that you should magnify Allah for having guided you, and that perhaps you may be thankful."
Poet, editor, and prose writer Kazim Ali was born in the United Kingdom to Muslim parents of Indian descent and has lived transnationally in the United States, Canada, India, France, and the Middle East. He earned a BA and MA from the University at Albany-SUNY and an MFA from New York University.
Justyce McAllister, the main character of this novel, experiences the discrimination one can face based on their race, when he finds himself in handcuffs. Even though he's a good student who's on the road to an Ivy-League school, he still finds himself the victim of racial profiling. As a reader, you get to see the story Justyce goes through, and his realization and understanding of what it means to be an African American child in America, as he experiences further micro-agressions and discrimination and navigates his life at his predominantly White school.
Leanne Dunic is a BC-based poet and winner of the Alice Munro Short Story Contest in 2015. She is both a songwriter and a poet, and her most recent collection, “One and a Half of You,” was published by Talonbooks in 2021. It is a poetic memoir chronicling a child of biracial origin growing up in British Columbia.
Dunic’s work is deeply connected to the place she grew up. What part of your and your personality are a result of the place you’ve grown up?
Elizabeth Alexander’s careful, precise poetry and her awareness of history, especially African American history, as well as her personal friendship with the Obamas, made her a natural choice as President Obama’s inaugural poet. Alexander became only the fourth poet ever asked to read at a presidential inauguration, and her poem, “Praise Song for the Day” was heard and watched by billions worldwide. Based on traditional African praise songs, which commemorate the life of an individual in an incantatory call-and-response, Alexander’s poem focused less on President Obama and more on ordinary Americans, attempting to describe the details, languages and encounters that shape their lives. Alexander gestured toward the history of the Civil Rights Movement and its importance to the occasion—“Say it plain, that many have died for this day”—but also attempted to summarize a national journey. The poem helped make Alexander one of the most publically-known and respected poets writing today.
Following the form and purpose of Alexander, compose a praise poem.
Warning: racist language.
Historical context: The desegregation of the American school system and specifically The Little Rock Nine which was a group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas.
Write about an injustice you would like to see addressed from the point of view of the victim(s).
During the early 1990s, Angelou wrote several books for children, including Life Doesn’t Frighten Me (1993), which also featured the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat; My Painted House, My Friendly Chicken, and Me (1994), and Kofi and His Magic (1996), both collaborations with the photographer Margaret Courtney-Clark. Angelou’s poetry collections include The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (1994) and Phenomenal Woman (1995), a collection of four poems that takes its title from a poem which originally appeared in Cosmopolitan magazine in 1978. The poem’s narrator describes the physical and spiritual characteristics and qualities that make her attractive. Angelou also wrote occasional poems, including A Brave Startling Truth (1995), which commemorated the founding of the United Nations, and Amazing Peace (2005), a poem written for the White House Christmas tree-lighting ceremony.
Write a poem about something you deem phenomenal - a thing, a person, yourself?
Bennett attended the prestigious Brooklyn High School for Girls and became the first black member of the school's Literary and Dramatic Societies. Upon her graduation from high school in 1921, she enrolled at Columbia University. She eventually earned her college degree from the Pratt Institute in 1924. After completing college, she was hired as an Assistant Professor of Art at Howard University, but she left in 1925 when she was awarded a $1000 scholarship to study art at the Sorbonne in Paris. Once she returned to the United States, she resumed her position at Howard University and began to emerge as an influential literary figure during the Harlem Renaissance.
Writing prompt: What is an epitaph? Write an epitaph for your own life.
Lyricly rich poem about Spring. Born March 28, 1976, Ada Limón is originally from Sonoma, California. As a child, she was greatly influenced by the visual arts and artists, including her mother, Stacia Brady. In 2001 she received an MFA from the Creative Writing Program at New York University. Her first collection of poetry, Lucky Wreck (Autumn House Press, 2006), was the winner of the 2005 Autumn House Poetry Prize. She is also the author of The Carrying (Milkweed Editions, 2018); Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions, 2015), which was a finalist for the National Book Award; Sharks in the Rivers (Milkweed Editions, 2010); and This Big Fake World (Pearl Editions, 2006), winner of the 2005 Pearl Poetry Prize. Of Limón's work, the poet Richard Blanco writes, "Both soft and tender, enormous and resounding, her poetic gestures entrance and transfix." A 2001-2002 fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and a Guggenheim Fellow, she has also received a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts and won the Chicago Literary Award for Poetry. She splits her time between Lexington, Kentucky, and Sonoma, California.
How do you reshape or reimagine your world every day?
“Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father was a Palestinian refugee and her mother an American of German and Swiss descent, and Nye spent her adolescence in both Jerusalem and San Antonio, Texas. She earned her BA from Trinity University in San Antonio. Nye is the recipient of numerous honors and awards for her work, including the Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement from the National Book Critics Circle, the Lavan Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Carity Randall Prize, the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry award, the Robert Creeley Prize, and many Pushcart Prizes. She has received fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and she was a Witter Bynner Fellow. From 2010 to 2015 she served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. In 2018 she was awarded the Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Texas Institute of Letters. Nye is the Poetry Foundation's Young People's Poet Laureate.” - From Poetry Foundation