We often write around a subject until we eventually write the final (or a published) version. Some early drafts might not look anything like the final draft, but the poet knows where the poem began. In this Fake AWP session, poets will read a final draft and either an early draft or a close-cousin poem that helped them to write the final draft.
Saida Agostini is a queer Afro-Guyanese poet whose work explores how Black folks harness mythology to enter the fantastic. Her work is featured or forthcoming in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem a Day, Plume, Honey, Barrelhouse, amongst others. Saida’s work can be found in several anthologies, including The Future of Black, and Plume Poetry 9. Her first full length collection let the dead in was released by Alan Squire Publishing (March 2022). A Cave Canem Graduate Fellow, Saida is a two-time Pushcart Prize Nominee and Best of the Net Finalist.
Majda Gama is the author of the chapbook "The Call of Paradise" (Two Sylvias, 2023) selected by Diane Seuss as winner of the 2022 Two Sylvias chapbook prize. Her full-length manuscript won the Wandering Aengus Book Award and will be published in 2025. Poems have recently appeared in The Adroit Journal, Four Way Review, The Offing, POETRY, “We Call to the Eye & the Night” (Persea, 2023) an anthology of love poems by Arab Anglophone poets, and are forthcoming from Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, and Terrain.org. Majda is Shenandoah's 2023 Graybeal-Gowen award winner for Virginia poets. She is based in Northern Virginia where she tends to a native plant garden that was certified as a home wildlife sanctuary by the Audubon Society. Majda is currently a co-host of the long running DC literary salon Café Muse.
jo reyes-boitel is a queer, mixed Latinx poet, playwright, and scholar. Completing their MFA at the University of Texas – Rio Grande Valley, jo is a Presidential Research Fellow and teaches undergraduate creative writing courses. jo’s work centers on decoloniality and the role of longing and mourning in reclamation. jo has also written and produced “she wears bells”, a hybrid opera, which was a finalist in Guerilla Opera’s 2022 virtual festival. jo is a fellow of Macondo and VoNA/Voices of Our Nations. Their publications include Michael + Josephine (FlowerSong Press, 2019), the chapbook mouth (Neon Hemlock, 2021), and her newest work, the matchstick litanies (Next Page Press, 2023).
Amanda Shaw set out into the world of adulthood, like most of us, with a vague idea of what was ahead. Since college she has lived in six different states and four countries, with poetry the greatest constant. After 20+ years of teaching and editing, she received her MFA in January 2020. She became a caretaker for her mother three years ago while continuing work as a freelance editor and teacher in official and non-official capacities. She currently divides her time between New Hampshire, where she was born, and Washington, D.C. Her upcoming collection, It Will Have Been So Beautiful, is due out from Lily Poetry Review Books in March 2024.
Annie Bloom's Books is excited to be the independent, long-distance neighborhood bookstore partnering with Brown Bag Lit for this event. Annie Bloom's has been a proud indie since 1978 and can ship anywhere in the United States from their store in Portland, Oregon. You can follow this link to their website and order a book to support these fabulous writers.