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Join three award-winning writers for a reading from their respective works that dive into unique perspectives on what it means to belong.
What does it mean to be a literary and political subject in the afterlife of colonization? Texas-based Nigerian American poet Ayokunle Falomo sifts through Nigerian stories and mythologies to explore the self, family, and nationhood through the intimate lens of father-son relationships and a reckoning with colonizers. KB Brookins’s personal experiences growing up in Texas informs their memoir, blending Black queer studies and cultural criticism to explore notions of beauty and toxicity of Black masculinity from a transgender perspective. Award-winning poet Sara Bawany’s Quarter Life Crisis dives headfirst into the brutal reexamining of a period in one’s life described by many as a time of uncertainty, insecurity, and doubt for the future, one that is rooted in the intersection of faith, mental health, and justice.
✦✦✦ ABOUT THE READERS ✦✦✦
Ayokunle Falomo is Nigerian, American, and the author of AFRICANAMERICAN’T (FlowerSong Press, 2022), two self-published collections and African, American (New Delta Review, 2019; selected by Selah Saterstrom as the winner of New Delta Review’s 8th annual chapbook contest). A recipient of fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, MacDowell, and the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program, where he obtained his MFA in Creative Writing—Poetry, his work has been anthologized and widely published in print and online publications: The New York Times, Houston Public Media, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Texas Review, New England Review, Write About Now among others. You can find more information about him at afalomo.com.
KB Brookins is a Black queer and trans writer, cultural worker, and visual artist from Texas. KB’s chapbook How To Identify Yourself with a Wound won the Saguaro Poetry Prize, a Writer’s League of Texas Discovery Prize, and a Stonewall Honor Book Award. Their debut poetry collection Freedom House won the American Library Association Barbara Gittings Literature Award and the Texas Institute of Letters Award for the Best First Book of Poetry. KB’s debut memoir Pretty released in May 2024 with Alfred A. Knopf. Follow them online at @earthtokb.
Sara Bawany is a clinical social worker and second-year MFA Poetry student at Texas State University. She published (w)holehearted: a collection of poetry and prose in 2018, and her second book, Quarter Life Crisis, was published in October 2023. She is the Assistant Managing Editor at Porter House Review and is an instructor at House of Amal, a writing institution for Muslim youth. You can learn more about her work atwww.sarabawany.com.
