You will definitely want to join us for this edition of What The Universe Is as we celebrate two powerful poets and help usher a new book into the world!

Brionne Janae is a poet and teaching artist living in Brooklyn. They are the author of Blessed are the Peacemakers (2021) which won the 2020 Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize, and After Jubilee (2017) published by Boat Press. Brionne is a 2023 NEA Creative Writing Fellow, a Hedgebrook Alum and proud Cave Canem Fellow. Their poetry has been published in Best American Poetry 2022, Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, The Sun Magazine, jubilat, and Waxwing among others. Brionne is the co-host of the podcast: The Slave is Gone alongside poet Jericho Brown and Rogue Scholar Aífe Murray. Off the page they go by Breezy.

Enzo Silon Surin is a Haitian-born, award-winning poet, educator, librettist, publisher and social advocate. He is the author of three previous collections of poetry, including When My Body Was A Clinched Fist (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), winner of the 21st Annual Massachusetts Book Awards for Poetry and the forthcoming collection, American Scapegoat (Black Lawrence Press, May 2023). He is co-editor of Where We Stand: Poems of Black Resilience (Cherry Castle Publishing, 2022), and the recipient of a New England Poetry Club grant, a Brother Thomas Fellowship from the Boston Foundation, a PEN New England Discovery Award and a 2020 Denis Diderot Grant as an Artist-in-Residence at Chateau d’Orquevaux in France .

Surin’s work has been featured in numerous publications including by the Poetry Foundation and in Poem-a-Day by the Academy of American Poets. He teaches creative writing and literature at Bunker Hill Community College and is also Founding Editor and Publisher at Central Square Press and Founder/Executive Director at the Faraday Publishing Company, Inc., a nonprofit literary services and social advocacy organization.

Register to get your Zoom link here: bit.ly/WTUIMay2023