ON SEPTEMBER 27, 2018 AT 7:00 PM, JOIN US AT THE WING (FLATIRON) TO SUPPORT TALLER SALUD.
Taller Salud is a nonprofit organization based in Loíza, Puerto Rico, a low-income coastal municipality. The organization works for the health and wellbeing of girls, young people and adult women in Puerto Rico. This event, which coincides with the first anniversary of Hurricane Maria, highlights the importance of Taller Salud’s work in the aftermath of the storm, when access to women’s health is even more difficult.
Taller Salud defines health as the emotional, physical, mental and spiritual well-being to which all human beings are entitled. With this goal in mind, the organization educates and mobilizes women of all ages, so that they become active agents in the promotion and maintenance of their individual health and the health of their community.
Taller Salud works towards the prevention of: sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), HIV / AIDS, teen pregnancies, violence, sexual assault and prevention of child abuse. In addition, they facilitate peace agreements in communities to seek a peaceful coexistence. After the hurricanes Irma and María in 2017, Taller Salud channeled water and food supplies, as well as essentials for safety, into affected areas. They also contributed to the reconstruction of homes for the victims in Loíza and surrounding towns.
Image courtesy of Taller Salud.
Readers
Naima Coster
Naima Coster is the author of Halsey Street, a novel of family, loss, and renewal, set in a rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn. Halsey Street has been recommended as a must-read for 2018 by People, Essence, Kirkus Reviews, and more. Her stories and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Catapult, The Paris Review Daily, and elsewhere.
Melissa Febos
Melissa Febos is the author of the memoir, Whip Smart (St. Martin’s Press 2010), and the essay collection, Abandon Me (Bloomsbury 2017), which The New Yorker called, “mesmerizing.” Abandon Me was a LAMBDA Literary Award finalist, a Publishing Triangle Award finalist, an Indie Next Pick, and was widely named a Best Book of 2017.
Febos is the inaugural winner of the Jean Córdova Nonfiction Award from LAMBDA Literary and the recipient of the 2017 Sarah Verdone Writing Award from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Her work has recently appeared in Tin House, Granta, The Believer, The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, Lenny Letter, The Guardian, and Vogue. Her essays have been anthologized widely and won prizes from Prairie Schooner, Story Quarterly, and The Center for Women Writers at Salem College. She is a three-time MacDowell Colony fellow and has also received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, The Barbara Deming Memorial Foundation, The BAU Institute, Ragdale, and The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Monmouth University and serves on the Board of Directors for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts.
Michele Filgate
Michele Filgate is a contributing editor at Literary Hub and on the board of the National Book Critics Circle. Her work has appeared in Longreads, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Refinery29, Slice, The Paris Review Daily, Tin House, Gulf Coast, The Rumpus, Salon, Interview Magazine, Buzzfeed, The Barnes & Noble Review, Poets & Writers, CNN.com, Fine Books & Collections Magazine, DAME Magazine, The Brooklyn Quarterly, Time Out New York, People, The Daily Beast, O, The Oprah Magazine, Men's Journal, Vulture, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Star Tribune, The Quarterly Conversation, The Brooklyn Rail, and other publications. She teaches creative nonfiction for The Sackett Street Writers' Workshop and Catapult and is the founder of the Red Ink series. In 2016, Brooklyn Magazine named her one of "The 100 Most Influential People in Brooklyn Culture."
Hermione Hoby
Hermione grew up in south London and has lived in New York since 2010. Her first novel, Neon in Daylight, was published by Catapult in January 2018 and was a two times New York Times Editors’ choice and a “Book of the Times”. She writes about culture for the Guardian, the New Yorker, the New York Times and others and teaches in the Creative Writing Department of Columbia University.
Crystal McCreary
Crystal McCreary is a writer, educator and wellness specialist and is passionately committed to creating and holding safe spaces for people to connect, heal, learn, and build resilience and equity in a world that often takes relentless hold of our bodies, minds, and hearts. Crystal supports individuals and organizations through professional development workshops, trainings, yoga classes and lovingly curated yoga and wellness retreats internationally, and chronicles the tales of personal transformation and resilience she has witnessed in her blog, Diary of a Yoga Gurl, and in her upcoming book Coming Home. Crystal has been featured in Lauren Lipton’s Yoga Bodies Book, Mantra Yoga + Health magazine, Elephant Journal, Race & Yoga, the UC Berkeley online academic journal, Shondaland.com, among others, contributes regularly to numerous blogs and podcasts. She studied African and African American studies at Stanford University and acting as part of The American Conservatory Theater MFA program before arriving in New York in 2004. Crystal lives in New York City and occasionally moonlights as an actor on film or television. To learn more about Crystal visit: www.crystalmccrearyyoga.com
If you can't make it to the event but would still like to support the organization, please make a donation here.
This is our first ever partnership with the Wing! As such, only a limited number of tickets will be available to the public.