WITH: t'ai freedom ford, Keelay Gipson, & Theodore Kerr at BAM

Belladonna* Collaborative and Lambda Literary present: t'ai freedom ford, Keelay Gipson, & Theodore Kerr (with Jamara Wakefield) will read at Wendy's Subway Reading Room at BAM Fisher on Nov 22nd at 7pm. PLUS new chaplets from each reader available at this event! Curated by Diana Cage, Saretta Morgan, and William Johnson. Keelay Gipson is a multi-disciplinary artist including work as an actor, filmmaker, director and award-winning playwright. His play The Lost won 4 awards as part of the 2014 Planet Connections Theater Festivity. He was chosen as one of six playwrights featured as part of Harlem9’s Obie Award Winning 48 Hours in Harlem at The National Black Theatre. Canadian born Theodore (ted) Kerr is a Brooklyn based writer and organizer whose work focuses on HIV/AIDS and community. He was the programs manager at Visual AIDS. He received his MA from Union Theological Seminary where he researched Christian Ethics and HIV. He is a founding member of the What Would An HIV Doula Do? collective. His writing has appeared in POZ, The Advocate, WSQ, Lambda Literary, Drain, IndieWire, and Cineaste. Jamara Wakefield is a queer performance poet and professor. Her work is cross genre combining music, poetry, theater, music and improvisation to create public performance. She is the new age protector of the black radical tradition. www.jamara125.com t'ai freedom ford is a New York City high school English teacher and Cave Canem Fellow. She received her MFA in Fiction from Brooklyn College. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Black Ivy, The Brooklyn Review, Bronx Biannual and Kweli. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Drunken Boat, Sinister Wisdom, No, Dear, The African American Review, Vinyl, Muzzle, Poetry and others. Her work has also been featured in several anthologies including The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop. In 2012 and 2013, she completed two multi-city tours as a part of a queer women of color literary salon, The Revival. In 2014, she was the winner of The Feminist Wire’s inaugural poetry contest judged by Evie Shocklee. She is a 2015 Center for Fiction Fellow and the Poetry Project’s 2016 Emerge-Surface-Be Poetry fellow. Winner of the 2015 To the Lighthouse Poetry Prize, her first poetry collection, how to get over is forthcoming Spring 2017 from Red Hen Press. t’ai lives and loves in Brooklyn, but hangs out digitally at:shesaidword.com Belladonna* Collaborative's programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.