Join Soul Sister Revue Anthology Tour Stop in collaboration with Women Writers Bloom Potluck Salon + Open Mic Sat Dec 19, 2020 (3-6pm EST) on Zoom with featured poets Kamilah Aisha MOON, Yesenia MONTILLA, Mariahadessa Ekere TALLIE, Keisha-Gaye ANDERSON, Amanda JOHNSTON and Freida JONES!

You're invited to an end of year online collaboration between Soul Sister Revue & Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon on Saturday, Dec 19, 2020 (3-6pm EST)! Join our potluck Salon + Open Mic on Zoom! Sit down with your favorite meal/snack and beverage on Saturday, December 19th from 3-6pm EST. Salon Curator JP HOWARD & Soul Sister Revue Curator, CYNTHIA MANICK collaborate to co-host this end of year 2020 stop on the Soul Sister Revue Anthology Tour featuring Soul Sister Revue Anthology Contributors who are also Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon members! JP Howard will begin by sharing a few writing prompts that you can use later and then we will meet briefly in small break-out rooms to check in with each other. Our fabulous featured poets are Kamilah Aisha MOON, Yesenia MONTILLA, Mariahadessa Ekere TALLIE, Keisha-Gaye ANDERSON, Freida JONES, and Amanda JOHNSTON! They will each share their powerful poetry. We will end with a multi-genre open mic and will try to accommodate as many writers as we can. Each Open Mic poet can ONLY share one poem or other genre piece, no longer that 2 to 3 minutes MAX.

*Purchase Soul Sister Revue: A Poetry Compilation now! https://www.soulsisterrevue.com/the-anthology

*Sign up to receive invites to future Women Writers in Bloom Salons: http://eepurl.com/lNK0b

* Sign up to receive invites to Soul Sister Revue events: https://www.soulsisterrevue.com/contact

Donations to support Soul Sister Revue & Cynthia Manick's community work are encouraged via: Paypal: cynthiamanick@gmail.com or Venmo: @CynthiaManick

Donations to support Women Writers Bloom & JP Howard's community work are encouraged via: PayPal to womenwritersbloom@gmail.com, Venmo to JPHoward_poet, Zelle to jph.poet@gmail.com or Cash app to $JPpoet

Visit Bloom donation link here: https://bit.ly/2VHthTc

Join our Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/224796855715189/

BIOS of OUR FEATURED POETS

KEISHA-GAYE ANDERSON is a Jamaican-born poet, writer, visual artist, and media professional based in Brooklyn, NY. She is the author of Gathering the Waters (Jamii Publishing 2014), Everything Is Necessary (Willow Books), and A Spell for Living, which received the Editors’ Choice recognition for the Numinous Orisons, Luminous Origin Literary Award, and is forthcoming from Agape Editions as a multimedia e-book, including music and Keisha’s original artwork. Keisha has been widely published in national literary journals, magazines, and anthologies that include Kweli Literary Journal, Small Axe Salon, Interviewing the Caribbean, Renaissance Noire, The Caribbean Writer, The Killens Review of Arts and Letters, Mosaic Literary Magazine, African Voices Magazine, Streetnotes: Cross-Cultural Poetics, Caribbean in Transit Arts Journal, The Mom Egg Review, and others. Keisha is a past participant of the VONA Voices and Callaloo writing workshops, a former fellow of the North Country Institute for Writers of Color, and was short-listed for the Small Axe Literary Competition. In 2018, Keisha was selected as a Brooklyn Public Library Artist in Residence. Keisha holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from The City College, CUNY. http://www.keishagaye.ink

AMANDA JOHNSTON earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine. She is the author of two chapbooks, GUAP and Lock & Key, and the full-length collection Another Way to Say Enter. Her poetry and interviews have appeared in numerous online and print publications, among them, Callaloo, Poetry, Puerto del Sol, Muzzle, No, Dear and the anthologies, Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry and Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism. The recipient of multiple Artist Enrichment grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the Christina Sergeyevna Award from the Austin International Poetry Festival, she is a Cave Canem fellow, a member of the Affrilachian Poets, cofounder of Black Poets Speak Out, and founder of Torch Literary Arts. https://www.amandajohnston.com

FREIDA JONES Born in Englewood, New Jersey, Freida Jones is a visual artist and writer. She is the author of Music Masquerades as Honey in My Hands, monologues and poems dramatizing our African American jazz legacy. The Midnight Ride, published in 2020, is her tribute to the Bronx. While pursuing her MFA at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, her play Lucky Strikes Legacy received good reviews. Inspired by the fusion of dance, music and spoken word, she collaborated with poet Melinda Goodman, to perform in Tiny Pyramids at Hampshire College. She credits Melinda for igniting a lifelong interest in performance. While working as a New York City teacher, Freida credits the spoken word of La Bruja as a powerful influence. Louder Arts/ Acentos and Women Writers in Bloom have enriched her world view.

YESENIA MONTILLA is an Afro-Latina poet & a daughter of immigrants. Her poetry has appeared in Gulf Coast, Prairie Schooner, & others. She received her MFA from Drew University & is a CantoMundo graduate fellow. Her first collection The Pink Box was Longlisted for a PEN award in 2016. Her second collection Muse Found in a Colonized Body is forthcoming (Four Way Books, 2022). https://www.yeseniamontilla.com

KAMILAH AISHA MOON The author of Starshine & Clay (2017), a CLMP Firecracker Award finalist featured on NPR's "All Things Considered" as a collection that captures America in poetry, and She Has a Name (2013), a finalist for both the Audre Lorde and Lambda Literary Awards, Kamilah Aisha Moon's work has been published widely, including in The New York Times, Best American Poetry, Harvard Review, Poem-A-Day, American Poetry Review and elsewhere. A Pushcart Prize winner and 2015 New American Poet who has received fellowships to MacDowell Colony, Vermont Studio Center and Hedgebrook, she holds an M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Agnes Scott College. http://www.kamilahaishamoon.org

MARIAHADESSA EKERE TALLIE LeFrak City, Queens native Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie is the author of the award winning children’s book Layla’s Happiness (Enchanted Lion Books),the poetry collections Strut (Agape Editions) and Karma’s Footsteps (Flipped Eye), and the book of letters Dear Continuum: Letters to a Poet Crafting Liberation (Grand Concourse Press). Her work has been widely published in journals and anthologies including Listen up!, BOMB, Black Renaissance Noire,The Golden Shovel, and The Breakbeat Poets Volume 2: Black Girl Magic. She is currently a Ph.D. student in the Theatre Arts and Performance Studies program at Brown University. Ekere is the mother of three galaxies who look like daughters. www.ekeretallie.com

ABOUT YOUR CO-HOSTS JP HOWARD & CYNTHIA MANICK

JP HOWARD is an author, educator, literary activist, curator and community builder. Her debut poetry collection, SAY/MIRROR (The Operating System & Liminal Lab), was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. She is also the author of bury your love poems here (Belladonna*/Belladonna Books) and co-edited Sinister Wisdom Journal Black Lesbians--We Are the Revolution! JP is a 2020 featured author in Lambda Literary’s LGBTQ Writers in Schools program and was a Split This Rock Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism finalist. She is featured in the Lesbian Poet Trading Card Series from Headmistress Press. JP has received fellowships and grants from Cave Canem, VONA, Lambda, and the Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC). JP’s poetry and/or essays have appeared or are forthcoming in The Slowdown Podcast, The Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day Series, Apogee Journal, The Feminist Wire, Split this Rock, Muzzle Magazine, and others. Her poetry is widely anthologized. JP is the Editor-at-Large at Mom Egg Review VOX and curates Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon, a NY based forum offering writers a monthly venue to collaborate. http://www.jp-howard.com

CYNTHIA MANICK is the author of Blue Hallelujahs (Black Lawrence Press) and editor of Soul Sister Revue: A Poetry Compilation (Jamii Publishing, 2019). She has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, MacDowell Colony, and Château de la Napoule among others. Winner of the Lascaux Prize in Collected Poetry, Manick was awarded Honorable Mention for the 2019 Furious Flower Poetry Prize. She is Founder of the reading series Soul Sister Revue; and her poem "Things I Carry Into the World" was made into a film by Motionpoems, an organization dedicated to video poetry, and has debuted on Tidal for National Poetry Month. A performer at literary festivals, libraries, universities, and most recently the Brooklyn Museum, Manick’s work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day Series, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. She currently serves on the Editorial Board of Alice James Books. http://www.cynthiamanick.com/