Please join us on Thursday, October 10th 7-9pm at Loyalty Books to support Al Otro Lado.
Readings by Sandra Beasley, Tafisha Edwards, Lisa Page, Kish Rusek, & Mejdulene B. Shomali
In honor of Latinx History Month, all proceeds from this event will support Al Otro Lado.
Al Otro Lado is a bi-national, direct legal services organization founded by Nora Phillips and Esmerelda Flores. This organization offers a multitude of immigration-based services to indigent deportees, migrants, and refugees in Tijuana, Mexico.
Al Otro Lado coordinates with attorneys and non-legal professionals in family law, labor law, criminal law (particularly post-conviction relief), and employment law. The organization also assists families with aspects of reunification in Mexico, and works with deported parents to ensure their rights are protected in the United States family court system.
Meet Our Readers
These five women will read stories and essays about a time they fell.
Sandra Beasley is the author of Count the Waves; I Was the Jukebox, winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize; Theories of Falling, and Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life, a disability memoir. She also edited Vinegar and Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. She lives in Washington, D.C., and teaches with the University of Tampa low-residency MFA program.
Tafisha A. Edwards is the Poetry Editor of Gigantic Sequins and author of The Bloodlet, winner of Phantom Books’ 2016 Breitling Chapbook Prize. Her work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Bettering American Poetry Volume 2, Bodega Magazine, Fjords Review, Washington Square Review, Winter Tangerine and other print and online publications. Her nonfiction work has appeared in Tidal, Vice, Cosmopolitan and other publications. She is a graduate of the University of Maryland’s Jiminéz-Porter Writers’ House, and a Cave Canem Graduate fellow.
Lisa Page is co-editor of We Wear The Mask: 15 True Stories of Passing in America. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, VQR, American Short Fiction, Playboy, and the Washington Post Book World, among other publications. She directs creative writing at the George Washington University.
Kish Rusek is a passionate and energetic writer and public servant who contributes to the efforts of educational reform and environmentalism in Washington, DC. Ms. Rusek has garnered more than $155 million for education and environmental programs across all wards of DC. Ms. Rusek is committed to the eradication discrimination – and co-champions equity and inclusion workshops developed by the National Coalition Building Institute across DC government agencies. She previously served on the Board of Directors of a local agricultural organization - the DC State Fair. In 2016, she was honored by the Cafritz Foundation as a distinguished public servant of Washington, DC. In a past life, she worked as journalist for a youth news organization in New York City. Outside of work and volunteer commitments, Ms. Rusek swims on a masters team, sculpts, sings opera, and plays squash regularly. She is writing a novel, Inheritance, about oppression in the Caribbean during British colonial rule.
Mejdulene B. Shomali is a Palestinian American poet and Assistant Professor of Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Her creative and scholarly work focuses on femininity, queerness, and transnational Arab cultural production. Mejdulene is a 2018 VONA fellow and Winter Tangerine Workshop alum. prayers for my father’s dementia was a semifinalist in the Button Poetry 2019 Chapbook Competition. coming of age in arabish was also a finalist for the Honeysuckle Press 2018 Chapbook Competition. Her individual poems and creative pieces can be read or are forthcoming in Copper Nickel, Cosmonauts Avenue, The Shade Journal, Tinderbox, Diode Press, The Pinch Journal, and Mizna, among others.
100% of your ticket prices will support Al Otro Lado.
Big thanks to Loyalty Books for hosting and supporting this event!