Dear Friends of L&F,

As those of you in our orbit know well, Lost & Found is grounded in rigorous archival and textual scholarship, a collaborative editorial praxis, and friendship. We build synergistic relationships between poets past and present through research, publishing, pedagogy, and public events. With low overhead, lots of good will, and horizontal support structures to activate in difficult times—we were able to faithfully and creatively carry the initiative forward while foregrounding community care during 2020-2021. Looking ahead, we are grateful and motivated to share the kinetic potential of poetry to transform the way we think about and act in our worlds through our publication.

L&F publishes influential 20th century cultural figures in poetry, though we tend to spotlight their less mainstream labors, letters, and creations. In recent years, we have widened our disciplinary scope to include archival research that relates discourses in poetry to music, theater, performance, activism, and the visual arts. A continued focus on the interplay of poetics and social/educational justice has led us to publish syllabi, class notes and manifestos by former CUNY professors such as Toni Cade Bambara, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, and Adrienne Rich; as well as early institutional plans drafted by groundbreaking Native American scholar and poet Dr. Jack D. Forbes.

Poetry pedagogy has become such a big part of our mission that we are working collaboratively with instructors across CUNY to build and enact curriculums that contextualizes these authors’ work. We have had the extraordinary good fortune to collaborate with Lehman College colleagues Nicole Flores, Francis Merencillo, Matt Caprioli, Lise Esdaile, Sarah Ohmer, Mary Phillips, and Olivia Loksing Moy on an Audre Lorde Great Read. Further, the inspired team behind Transformative Learning in the Humanities - led by Shelly Eversley and Cathy Davidson - included the L&F CUNY poet-pedagogs series as a core part of their faculty summer institute curriculum. Finally, L&F editor Conor Tomás Reed teamed up with Wendy’s Subway to develop “Radiating Black ~ Puerto Rican ~ Feminist Studies from the City University of New York to the Americas and the Caribbean,” an event series and public syllabi on radical CUNY pedagogy.

In 2021 and beyond, we’ll engage students, colleagues, and poets/writers/artists working extra-institutionally to expand our focus on writing that transcends and connects civic and cultural milieus as well as writing that supports liberatory spaces of learning in higher education. We hope you’ll be part of this vision! You can support our efforts with a donation, by reading and recommending our books to friends, and by teaching them via Manifold or print in your classrooms. And be on the lookout for our next series featuring new writing by Lucia Berlin, Jim Schoppert, Jacques Viau Renaud, Sargon Boulos, Margaret Randall, Diane di Prima, George Bowering, Gilbert Sorrentino, A.B. Spellman, Federico García Lorca and Laura García-Lorca coming out later this year!

We are grateful to our CUNY colleagues, especially those at the Early Research Initiative, Manifold, and Transformative Learning in the Humanities. ​This project is additionally supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Poets & Writers, Humanities NY, The Leslie Scalapino–O Books Fund, Furthermore: a program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund, The Provost’s Office at the Graduate Center, CUNY, Early Research Initiative, the Sylvia Klatzkin Steinig Fund, André Spears, Margo & Anthony Viscusi, and Engaging the Senses Foundation.

—Kendra Sullivan, Publisher

Goodbyes: Diane di Prima

Although we find her presence still very much among us, it is hard to even measure the loss of Diane di Prima, certainly a guiding light and inspiration to so much of the work we have done and the ways we have conducted ourselves in the world. The work, of course, will continue, along with the inspiration.

Along with Sheppard Powell, Diane’s husband and life partner, and Sara Larsen, poet and long-time assistant to Diane, I have been appointed a co-executor of her estate, and there are already many projects underway. These include translations into Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Turkish, with more on the way. A new edition of Revolutionary Letters, along with the long anticipated Spring & Autumn Annals, written in 1964 but never published, will be out from City Lights this Fall. We are also eager to put together a book of her poetics, drawing from many of the texts we published at Lost & Found.

Diane continued writing to the very last. For several years she had been inspired by visitations from Sappho, prompted by all the white space left in the edition of Anne Carson’s translation, a conveyance she converted into notebooks for an ongoing series of poems filling many copies of that book.

But over the final six or so months of her life, Diane began a new series called “The Goodbyes.” As Sheppard put it, she felt it was important—particularly as a Buddhist—to make her feelings clear before continuing on her journey. In lieu of a more formal memorial, we give you these three “Goodbyes,” two of them to herself, and one addressed to me and our common endeavor.

-Ammiel Alcalay

5/9/20 The Goodbyes—Diane di Prima

in the golden light

of the night sky

I sing to the black stars

6/3/20 The Goodbyes—Diane di Prima

pain

told her

when to quit

6/5/20 The Goodbyes—Ammiel Alcalay

wild-haired

siddha

lost & found

Read Lost & Found Editor Iris Cushing’s writing on the meaning and impact of Diane's legacy, in the wake of her passing, in these reflections here: Remembering Diane di Prima, Diane di Prima's Guidebook to Revolution, and On Diane di Prima.

In addition to Diane, we have acutely felt the loss of many other friends and collaborators. For more, please see “In Memoriam” in Part 2 of our newsletter.

Light Relief

During the pandemic, Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative has centered its energies on keeping creativity and connection alive in our extended community. In the early weeks, we launched Lost & Found: Light Relief. A WPA-inspired platform. We asked CUNY and Lost & Found-affiliated poets/writers, archivists/scholars, and students/artists to dive into their own personal archives to publish short-form, mixed-media digital works.

Contributed works offer a living archive of the present. Managing editor Stephon Lawrence worked closely with Robin Miller and Matt Gold of CUNY’s Manifold team (an open source, annotable scholarly publishing platform) to learn HTML to code and ultimately launch all five digital issues of Lost & Found Light Relief, Series One which you can read here, featuring poetry, sound, and archival discovery by:

• Adjua Greaves | The Fruits of the Crown, 2020 | Epic poem. | Google Document shared in draft form with Max Pierson who declared its necessity.

• Cristina Elena Pardo Spanish-English translation by Alexander Soria | Two Poems

• Lindsey Eckenroth (in collaboration with composer Whitney George, and audio engineer Nicholas R. Nelson Whitney George and audio engineer Nicholas R. Nelson) | When I dream, I dream of you

• No Land | untitled
  

• Sara Deniz Akant | Once There Was and Once There Wasn’t : The Story of P

• Jacques Viau Renaud presented and translated by Ariel Francisco | FOR AN ASSASSINATED BLACK LEADER, & (the last three sections of “PERMANENCE OF THE CRY”)

• Grisel Y. Acosta | To Split a Plantain

• John Wieners presented and edited by Michael Seth Stewart | Untitled 1962 Journal by John Wieners: Excerpts from a Work in Progress

• Phoebe Glick | Three Poems

• Senia Hardwick | Images

Read more about the poets and artists featured in Series One here.

And coming soon, Series 2 through 5 which will feature creative works from the following poets and artists:

SERIES 2

Ammiel Alcalay
Henry Ferrini
Joey S. Kim
Lucy Torres
Sean M. Kennedy
Brad Fox
Iris Cushing
John Rufo
Marine Cornuet
Stefano Morello

SERIES 3

Ali Macomber
Daniela R. Molina
Kara Laurene Pernicano
Lois Griffith
S*an D. Henry Smith
Claudia Moreno Parsons & Megan Paslawski
Jacqui Cornetta
Lara Mimosa Montes
Lucas de Lima

SERIES 4

A. Jay Ader
David Abel
Kate Tarlow Morgan
Michael Tencer
Uranita Ramirez
Daniel C. Remein
Kai Krienke
Lauren O’Connor and Louise Landes Levi
Roberto Harrison

SERIES 5

Bernadette Mayer
Jojo Karlin
Nicholas Komodore
Chris Russell
Madeleine Barnes
Velina Manolova​

Everyone at L&F is deeply grateful to Stephon, who skilled up big time during the quarantine to ensure these works/words continue to have ways to circulate, and to Robin and Matt, who helped push us to think creatively and ambitiously about how to publish poetry as a vital form of knowledge on Manifold. Special thanks to our friends and collaborators Engaging the Senses Foundation for their generous support.

Publishing on Manifold

CUNY's installation of Manifold is an intuitive, collaborative, open-source platform for scholarly publishing. With Manifold, you can publish dynamic digital texts with rich media support, powerful annotation tools, and robust community dialogue: a perfect virtual home for Lost & Found. CUNY’s Manifold, led by Professor Matthew K. Gold with support from colleagues Robin Miller and Wendy Barrales, is a free publishing platform for the CUNY community. Lost & Found texts will be available for custom classroom use, self-study, and group engagement and annotation.

“The CUNY Manifold team is delighted to partner with the Center for Humanities and Lost and Found on this amazing project. We’ve been developing the CUNY instance of Manifold as a hub for open educational materials (OER) across the 25-campus CUNY system, and these primary source documents are an amazing trove of materials that will be of wide interest and that will be used in a number of CUNY classrooms.”

—Matt Gold

Launching Audre Lorde and June Jordan Publications on Manifold

We are thrilled to announce that the first two of our publications from our CUNY Pedagogy Series that are now available on Manifold are Audre Lorde: "I teach myself in outline,” Notes, Journals, Syllabi, & an Excerpt from Deotha and June Jordan "Life Studies," 1966-1976.

We are launching these digital versions of our physical texts as part of an ongoing effort to make our pedagogy series available to all who might use them in their daily education, liberation, or self-care practices. You can read Audre Lorde’s work here and June Jordan’s here.

"I'm especially happy that the first wave of CUNY poet-activist-pedagogy Manifold editions by Audre Lorde and June Jordan are available through CUNY's Manifold. An open online edition like this activates poetry as a knowledge practice in classrooms across CUNY while ensuring the continual presence and influence of these authors in a CUNY-specific context, the context in which they sharpened their craft and shaped institutional futures as part of student-led struggle. To say that the classes they taught, the lessons they learned, and the poems they wrote while doing so are still necessary is an understatement - these teaching documents and creative texts help readers understand how poetry and pedagogy can and do work together toward collective uplift, especially at CUNY, institutional home to so many poets."

—Kendra Sullivan

Writing in the Pause

Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative publishes the work of poet-educators whose writing and pedagogical practices are braided into intellectual, social, and political lives. As classrooms around the world aggregated in digital space during the pandemic, we saw an opportunity for poetry to bring intimacy to distance learning and hospitality to virtual spaces.

Poet-educator Sara Jane Stoner taught 3 courses under the moniker Poetry in the Pause. The first course was called Writing in the Manifold. WitM was a series of workshops co-led with other writers to sustain and experiment with a rhythm of reading, writing, and spontaneous sharing. Co-leaders included Kendra Sullivan, Ariel Goldberg, Phoebe Glick, Alexis Almeida, Maryam Parhizkar, Rijard Bergeron, Benjamin Krusling, Daisy Atterbury, Jenny Hsiao, Andriniki Mattis, and Adjua Gargi Nzinga Greaves. The next course was called Being to Teach, an experimental forum on embodied text-based teaching. The final course, Critical Poesis: Long Form, was an extension of a workshop taught for the Poetry Project that sought to merge critical and poetic impulses and tactics.

“It has been a couple of weeks since Sara Jane Stoner's workshop has concluded, and I wanted to thank you for introducing me to her work and especially for funding my partaking in her teachings. I cannot say enough good things about her, her extraordinary style of teaching, and how much I have grown as a human by taking her workshop. As a musicology student working on the work of a composer who happens to have been equally a poet, I especially want to thank you for opening up the opportunity for me to explore aspects of myself that shows up in my musical listening that also has registers in poetry and poetics--registers that have never been addressed in all of my coursework in the music department, by attending Sara Jane's workshop. It has been a real game changer.”

—Michelle Aeojin Yom, (Music, CUNY Graduate Center)

SPRING 2021 Lost & Found EVENTS

Lift Every Voice: A Celebration of 250 Years of African American Poetry

Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative is excited to have partnered with One Book One Bronx and Literary Freedom Project in collaboration with the Leonard Lief Library at Lehman College, City University of New York, to host a series of virtual programs and reading groups as part of a nation-wide initiative, Lift Every Voice: Why African American Poetry Matters.

Lift Every Voice is a yearlong national public humanities initiative sponsored by the Library of America and The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture that seeks to engage participants in a multifaceted exploration of African American poetry, the perspectives it offers on American history and the on-going struggle for racial justice, and the universality of its imaginative response to the personal experiences of Black Americans over three centuries.

Our collaboration with One Book One Bronx/Lehman College brought audiences closer to the intersection of Black language and music. Programs focused on The Last Poets, Sun Ra, and Audre Lorde, among others, and included Dr. Tara Betts, Sequoia Maner, Tony Bolden, Mariposa Fernandez, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Patricia Spears Jones, Hank Williams,The Last Poets - Abiodun Oyewole, Umar bin Hassan, and Felipe Luciano, Woodie King Jr, Rodney Terich Leonard, Lise Esdaile, Trapeta B. Mayson, Grisel Y. Acosta, Juliana Costa, Ochy Curiel, Tanya L. Saunders, Monnette Sudler, Harmony Holiday and Hanif Abdurraqib. The series culminated with a performance by Pulitzer Prize Winner Tyehimba Jess from his book Olio.

Haunting Refrains: Sampling Practice in Black Poetry and Music with Harmony Holiday and Hanif Abdurraqib

Poets, writers, and cultural critic Harmony Holiday and Hanif Abdurraqib discussed “Haunting Refrains: Sampling Practice in Black Poetry and Music” on the technique of sampling Black music, poetry and literature and it’s relationship to free improvisation in both music and poetry by looking at their own work and that of poets whose work they admire, as well as music they love.

Sisters in Struggle and Song: A Reading and Conversation with Mariposa Fernández, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs and Patricia Spears Jones

Sisters in Struggle and Song featured New York-based poets Mariposa Fernandez (Bronx), LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs (Harlem) and Patricia Spears Jones (Brooklyn) reading to celebrate the publication of the Library of America’s history-making anthology, African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song, and their place within the Black poetic tradition.

Black Language and Music with Tara Betts, Sequoia Maner, and Tony Bolden

Dr. Tara Betts, Sequoia Maner, and Tony Bolden came together for “Black Language and Music” to share and consider a few poems and talk about the overlapping riches of Black language and music. These two expressions are not only valuable in the classroom, but in how they document the experiences of individual poets and Black people.

The Last Poets: Abiodun Oyewole, Umar bin Hassan, and Felipe Luciano

Lehman College scholar Hank Williams lead a conversation with The Last Poets: Abiodun Oyewole, Umar bin Hassan, and Felipe Luciano, along with Woodie King Jr, producer of albums featuring two different iterations of The Last Poets, a group of poets and musicians who arose from the late 1960s African-American civil rights movement's Black nationalism.

One Book One Bronx: Olio by Tyehimba Jess

One Book One Bronx, a new style reading group that inspires, encourages, and delights readers, meet each week of the month to discuss Tyehimba Jess’s Olio-- part fact, part fiction, Jess's Pulitzer-prize winning second book weaves sonnet, song, and narrative to examine the lives of mostly unrecorded African American performers directly before and after the Civil War up to World War I. Discussions facilitated by Paula Rameriz.

Tyehimba Jess Reading & Conversation

Tyehimba Jess was joined by Tara Betts for a reading and conversation as part the One Book One Bronx discussion and dialogue on Olio.

Poems as Songs that ‘Send’ Us: ‘Black Language & Music’ in Kevin Young’s African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song

A reading and discussion “Poems as songs that ‘Send us’” featuring Rodney Terich Leonard, Lise Esdaile, Trapeta B. Mayson, and Monnette Sudler on Black poetry and performance in Kevin Young’s African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song.

Black Cuir Revolutions: Reflections on Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, and the Bronx (part of the Audre Lorde “Great Read” at Lehman College)

Grounded in Audre Lorde’s “Learning from the 60s” and Black Queer/Cuir voices from the Caribbean and Latin America, “Black Cuir Revolutions: Reflections on Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, and the Bronx” engages Black History & Women's History Months with Sarah Ohmer, Tanya L Saunders, Ochy Curiel, Juliana Costa, and Grisel Y. Acosta, who consider the ways in which Black Queer/Cuir experiences and perspectives contribute to current revolutions.

Read the full event recap and reflection “It’s all about the political project” here by Sarah Soanirina Ohmer, Assistant Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies, African American Studies, and Women and Gender Studies at Lehman College in the Bronx, NY.

More about the Audre Lorde Great Read at Lehman College

During the Spring 2021 semester, Lehman faculty, staff, and students as part of The Audre Lorde Great Read will dive into the ouvre of Audre Lorde, drawing connections not only to the inequalities made starkly apparent by the Black Lives Matter movement and in the midst of the pandemic, but also linking and reminding ourselves of a very important history of labor movements, black intellectual thought, community-based pedagogy and ethics of care, and queer feminisms that have been rooted in many of our CUNY campuses. Affiliated instructors will assign monthly readings across courses in English, Sociology, Women’s Studies, Latino/Latin American Studies, and more. Monthly events will feature international panelists, including Queer Black and Latinx scholars from Colombia and Brasil, as well as talented student poets and writers from right here in the Bronx. The organizers are Nicole Flores, Francis Merencillo, Matt Caprioli, Lise Esdaile, Sarah Ohmer, Mary Phillips, and Olivia Loksing Moy.

Other Audre Lorde Great Read Events included:

“Teach-in” on Sister Outsider and “I Teach Myself in Outline” followed by Movie Viewing with Profs. Michelle Augustine and Mary Phillips

Student/staff-led discussions on “Poetry is Not A Luxury” and “I Teach Myself in Outline,” a Lost and Found Publication. Exploring CUNY’s Activist History & the history of CUNY organizing.

Poetry Readings and Recitations from The Black Unicorn

In honor of National Poetry Month, this reading celebrated Audre Lorde and her book The Black Unicorn as an inspiration for writing, reading, and being in the world. Bronx poets and writers will share original work centering themes of Black feminisms, female empowerment, queer pride, revolution, survival, and joy. Featuring local Bronx and student poets.

"Zami: Talkback & Testimonials" on Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (A Biomythography)

A roundtable with event organizers Nicole Flores, Francis Merencillo, Lise Esdaile, Mary Phillips, Matt Caprioli, Olivia Moy & Christian Dell'Armo to consider possibilities of allyship and care for others, followed by a town hall and brainstorming check-in with the audience. This final event embraces Lorde’s call to resist tactics of “horizontal hostility” in order to make room, rather, for alliances and coalition building across positionalities.

After After Jews and Arabs: Ammiel Alcalay in conversation with Gil Anidjar

Ammiel Alcalay’s After Jews and Arabs redrew the geographic, political, cultural, and emotional map of relations between Jews and Arabs in the Levantine/Mediterranean world over a thousand-year period. This spring, A Bibliography for “After Jews and Arabs will appear with Punctum Books, presenting the original and unchanged bibliography as a glimpse into the historical record of a unique scholarly, political, poetic, and cultural journey, along with three accompanying texts.

John Wieners' Letters for the Voices: A Conversation with Michael Seth Stewart, Ammiel Alcalay & Eileen Myles

“John Wieners’ Letters for the Voices” was a conversation with Michael Seth Stewart, Ammiel Alcalay, and Eileen Myles about the recent publication Yours Presently: Selected Letters of John Wieners which resurrects the poet’s demimonde and opens up the beloved poet for a new generation of readers. Lost & Found director Ammiel Alcalay will discuss the book with its editor, Seth Stewart and Boston-born poet and writer Eileen Myles, whose preface contextualizes John Wieners as the Boston poet she knew and has long admired.

Congrats to Michael Seth Stewart on the publication of the book he’s been working on for years and read these two new reviews:

“The Altered States of John Wieners” by Jeremy Lybarger in the Nation: “In his letters we can glimpse a radiant, jazz-struck testament to the vocation of poetry.”

“Queer Shoulders at the Wheel” by David Grundy in the Boston Review: “John Wieners was one of the most important gay poets of his generation, but subsequent decades have seen him all but forgotten. A new collection of his letters vividly returns him to readers.”

Translation Is a Mode = Translation Is an Anti-neocolonial Mode: Readings and Roundtable Discussion

A conversation with Mirene Arsanios, Sawako Nakayasu, and Mónica de la Torre reflecting on Don Mee Choi’s essay Translation Is a Mode = Translation Is an Anti-neocolonial Mode and its relation to their own approaches to expanded translation practice and complex linguistic-cultural identity.

The Craft We Didn't Learn: Retroactive Writing Advice from the Archives

Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative Editors Iris Cushing, Megan Paslawski, Zohra Saed, and Publisher Kendra Sullivan held a discussion on "The Craft We Didn't Learn: Retroactive Writing Advice from the Archives." This panel contributes to a timely conversation about the effects of marginalizing writers within the industry to remind us that we have lost a rich instructional writing history from writers like the ones published by Lost & Found, who for reasons encompassing race, class, gender, sexuality, and the independence of their artistic visions often worked outside the literary establishment.

FALL 2020 Lost & Found EVENTS

Radiating Black ~ Puerto Rican ~ Feminist Studies from the City University of New York to the Americas and the Caribbean: Conor Tomás Reed in Residence at Wendy’s Subway

Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative is proud to work with Rachel Valinsky and Wendy’s Subway to support Conor Tomás Reed's "Radiating Black~Puerto Rican~Feminist Studies from the City University of New York to the Americas and the Caribbean," organized as the current resident at Wendy's Subway, which evolved from Tomás Reed's ongoing work, research, and collaborations with Lost & Found & the Center for the Humanities including: through Audre Lorde Now, a series of essays published on Distributaries, The Audre Lorde Reading Group: "Your Silence will Not Protect You" which explored through community and experience Audre Lorde’s abundant legacy of teaching, writing, and social movement work; and as co-editor of the Lost & Found publications: June Jordan "Life Studies," 1966-1976 ; Toni Cade Bambara: "Realizing the Dream of a Black University,” & Other Writings (Parts I & II); and Adrienne Rich: Teaching at CUNY, 1968-1974 (Part I & II); and other related events.

This residency with Wendy's Subway will share archives and learning/organizing lessons on the entwined legacies of Black ~ Puerto Rican ~ Feminist Studies and movements at CUNY in the 1960s and 70s, in order to nourish bridges between community organizers, cultural workers, educators, and students in the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America. These radiant histories were broadcast through a three-month series of seven online public dialogues on the lives of Toni Cade Bambara, June Jordan, and Audre Lorde; explorations in Black~Puerto Rican~Third World Feminist Studies at CUNY now; histories of how CUNY movements created Open Admissions and Ethnic Studies; and present efforts to decolonize CUNY and New York City.

Decolonize CUNY and NYC!

This panel “Decolonize CUNY and NYC!” featured students, teachers, indigenous protectors, and accomplice community organizers who shared about campaigns to make CUNY tuition-free and improve learning/working conditions, while altering the university and city’s settler-colonial relationship to the area’s ecosystem and peoples.

Transforming CUNY Admissions, Studies Movements

For “Transforming CUNY Admissions, Studies, Movements,” Tami Gold, Pam Sporn, and Gisely Colón López share their new film MAKING THE IMPOSSIBLE POSSIBLE, about how Black and Puerto Rican student-led struggles won Puerto Rican Studies at Brooklyn College in the late 1960s. Ricardo Gabriel spoke about the historical and geopolitical context that led to the Puerto Rican student movement and the demand for Puerto Rican studies at CUNY from 1969 through the early 1970s. Amaka Okechukwu presented about the 1970 creation and 1999 termination of the Open Admissions policyat CUNY, detailed in her new book To Fulfill These Rights: Political Struggle Over Affirmative Action and Open Admissions. Anna Zeemont discussed gender justice and intersectionality in 1990s CUNY activist/arts publications and movements.

The School of Toni Cade Bambara with Makeba Lavan, Linda J. Holmes, Thabiti Lewis, & Louis Massiah

In this panel “The School of Toni Cade Bamba,” Makeba Lavan discussed Bambara's late 1960s efforts at City College on “Realizing the Dream of a Black University,” Linda J. Holmes (author of the Bambara biography A Joyous Revolt) shares her experiences with Bambara as a teacher and cultural worker in the 1970s at Livingston College and beyond, Thabiti Lewis introduced his new book "Black People Are My Business": Toni Cade Bambara's Practices of Liberation and Louis Massiah screened part of his documentary-in-progress The T.C.B. School of Organizing.

Translating Audre Lorde Now

In summer 2020, during the pandemic and social uprisings, “Audre Lorde Now” emerged from Cuba, Germany, Mexico, and New York City, featuring essays on Lorde’s rebellious lessons, emotional sustainability, visions from the future, and building transnational communities. This panel “Translating Audre Lorde Now” featured the series' contributors Conor Tomás Reed along with Tito Mitjans Alayón, Diarenis Calderón Tartabull, and AnouchK Ibacka Valiente--three Afro-Cuban queer and trans cultural workers based in Cuba, Mexico, and translator Julián González Beltrez, and discuss Lorde’s past and present relationships with feminist movements in Mexico.

Reading Audre Lorde in Community with The Audre Lorde Reading Group

Nimo Ali, Joy Gutierrez, Suzanne Herrera li Puma, Jillian White, T Wilkins (The Audre Lorde Reading Group) share reflections, resources, and stories from our collaborative learning process reading Audre Lorde’s biomythographies, essays, poetry, and teaching archives, with the intention to encourage further reading groups to bloom.

CUNY Black~Puerto Rican~Third World Feminist Studies Now with Johanna Fernández, Carmen Kynard, & Vani Kannan

In this panel “CUNY Black~Puerto Rican~Third World Feminist Studies Now,” we heard about Johanna Fernández's new book The Young Lords: A Radical History, as well as from Vani Kannan on a cultural history of the Third World Women’s Alliance, and from Carmen Kynard on CUNY Black feminist literacies. The Young Lords: A Radical History.

Activating June Jordan’s "Life Studies": Notes, Conversation, and Workshop with Maryam Parhizkar, Talia Shalev, Conor Tomás Reed

For “Activating June Jordan’s "Life Studies,” Conor Tomás Reed and Talia Shalev—editors of June Jordan’s “Life Studies,” 1966-1976— share notes on June Jordan’s poetic and pedagogical life in New York across a selection of writings covering housing justice, youth literacy, and college access and curriculum demands. Their presentation is followed by a conversation and workshop component, moderated by Maryam Parhizkar, in which participants will practice imagining their own “Life Studies” curricula.

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ PART 2 OF THIS LOST & FOUND NEWSLETTER: POSTCARDS FROM 2020-2021