We Count: Intersectionality and Activism in the Literary Landscape

We Count: Intersectionality and Activism in the Literary Landscape, a panel sponsored by VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, featuring Jennifer Baker, Cat Fitzpatrick, Hafizah Geter, Jyothi Natarajan, & Kathi Wolfe, moderated by Lynn Melnick - 7PM The 2015 VIDA Count included new categories for Women of Color, Trans and Disabled writers, confirming the lack of parity in the publishing world. Join this panel of writer-activists as they discuss their experiences and work to change the literary landscape, and the best ways to continue the conversation, get involved, and be an effective ally. Jennifer Baker is a publishing professional with 14 years' experience, instructor for creative nonfiction and social media director for Sackett Street Writers' Workshop, contributing writer to Forbes.com & Bustle.com, long-time team member for the nonprofit We Need Diverse Books, and creator/host of the Minorites in Publishing podcast. Cat Fitzpatrick is the Poetry Editor at Topside Press. She was born in London but somehow keeps waking up in Jersey City. In addition to performing her own work, her recent poems have been published in venues such as The Advocate, Glitterwolf, and Asylum. She is involved in organizing trans poetry events and co-ordinates a trans poetry workshop in NYC. She is very excited about trans poetry. Hafizah Geter received her BA in English & Economics from Clemson University, and her MFA in Poetry from Columbia College Chicago. She is a South Carolina native currently living in Brooklyn, New York. Hafizah is a Cave Canem Fellow and was a semi-finalist for the 2010 “Discovery” / Boston Review Contest. Her poem "paula" received an Honorable Mention in RHINO's 2011 Editors' Prize. A 2013 Blacksmith House Emerging Writer, recipient of a 2012 Amy Award from Poets & Writers, and a finalist in the Fifth Annual Narrative Magazine Poetry Prize, her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in BOXCAR Poetry Review, RHINO, Drunken Boat, Columbia Poetry Review, New Delta Review, Memorious, Vinyl, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, Hot Street, Pinwheel Journal, Linebreak, Narrative Magazine, Gulf Coast, Blunderbuss, H.O.W. Journal, and Boston Review. She was a 2014 Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship Finalist. Hafizah also serves on the board of VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts, co-curates the reading series EMPIRE with Ryann Stevenson, is a poetry editor at Phantom Booksand was formerly an assistant editor at YesYes Books. She is on the poetry comittee for the Brooklyn Book Festival. Lynn Melnick is the author of If I Should Say I Have Hope (YesYes Books, 2012) and the co-editor, with Brett Fletcher Lauer, of Please Excuse This Poem: 100 Poets for the Next Generation (Viking, 2015). Her poetry has appeared in BOMB, Guernica, The New Republic, The Paris Review, A Public Space, and elsewhere and she has written essays and book reviews for Boston Review, LA Review of Books, and Poetry Daily, among others. She teaches poetry at the 92Y and has mentored at Girls Write Now. She grew up in Los Angeles and currently lives in Brooklyn. Jyothi Natarajan is an editor and writer who has worked in publishing and journalism for the past 10 years. She is managing editor at the Asian American Writers' Workshop, where she edits an online arts and ideas magazine, The Margins, and runs a fellowship for emerging writers. As someone interested in the intersection of writing, social justice, and education, she helps run IndyKids, a social justice-oriented newspaper written by youth ages 9-13. She is currently on the nonfiction committee for the Brooklyn Book Festival. Kathi Wolfe’s most recent collection The Uppity Blind Girl Poems, winner of the 2014 Stonewall Chapbook Competition, was published by BrickHouse Books in 2015. Her poetry and essays have appeared or is forthcoming in Wordgathering, Poetry Magazine and other publications. Wolfe is a contributor to the groundbreaking anthologies QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology and Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability. A contributor to the “Washington Blade,” the acclaimed LGBT newspaper, Wolfe was a 2008 Lambda Literary Foundation Emerging Writer Fellow.