At 1pm on Saturday, February 22 at Neptunes, we host Fred Joiner and Jessica Q. Stark read as part of the North Carolina Book Festival’s Poetry Under the Sea program!
Fred Joiner is a poet and curator based in Chapel Hill, NC. He is 2019 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. His work has appeared in Callaloo, Gargoyle, and Fledgling Rag, among other publications. Fred has read his work nationally and internationally. Joiner has received awards and fellowships from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities and St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Most recently, one of Joiner’s poems was selected by curator and critic A.M. Weaver as part of her 5 x 5 public art project, Ceremonies of Dark Men. Another one of Joiner’s poems recently won the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art’s Divine Comedy Poetry Contest, in response to Abdoulaye Konate’s textile work.
As a curator of literary and visual arts programming, Joiner has worked with the American Poetry Museum, Belfast Exposed Gallery (Northern Ireland), Hillyer Artspace, Honfleur Gallery, Medina Galerie (Bamako, Mali), the Phillips Collection, the Prince Georges African American Museum and Cultural Center, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum and more. He is the co-founder of The Center for Poetic Thought in Washington, DC, he is a Board Member for The American Poetry Museum, a member of the Artist Advisory Board for the Orange County Arts Commission and a member of the Carrboro Poet’s Council.
Jessica Q. Stark is a mixed-race, Vietnamese poet originally from California. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks, the latest titled Vasilisa the Wise (Ethel Zine Press, 2018). Her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in Pleaides, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Hobart, Tupelo Quarterly, Potluck, and others. Her first full-length poetry collection, Savage Pageant, is forthcoming with Birds, LLC. She writes an ongoing poetry zine called INNANET. She is an Assistant Poetry Editor for AGNI and is a PhD student in English at Duke.
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