On April 7, 2020 six stellar poets came together with Black Sparrow Press and to celebrate the iconoclastic Wanda Coleman and her new collection Wicked Enchantment: Selected Poems, Edited & Introduced by Terrance Hayes. This incredible gathering of acclaimed poets and bona fide Wanda Coleman fans—Mahogany L. Browne, Terrance Hayes, Dorothea Lasky, Rachel McKibbens, Patricia Smith, and Amber Tamblyn—read from and discussed Coleman’s influential body of work.
ABOUT THE BOOK
For Wicked Enchantment: Selected Poems, Terrance Hayes selected more than 130 poems, spanning four decades, and created a powerful gathering of Coleman’s most essential work, which bestselling author Mary Karr calls, “words to crack you open and heal you where it counts.” BUY
ABOUT WANDA COLEMAN
Wanda Coleman—poet, short story writer, novelist, and essayist—was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles. Coleman was awarded the prestigious 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for Bathwater Wine from the American Academy of Poets—the first African-American woman to ever win the prize—and was a bronze-medal finalist for the 2001 National Book Award for Poetry for Mercurochrome.
ABOUT THE READERS
Mahogany L. Browne is a California born, Brooklyn based writer, educator, activist, mentor, and curator. She is the author of the collections Black Girl Magic (Roaring Brook Press, 2018) and Redbone (Willow Books, 2015), and coeditor of The BreakBeat Poets Volume 2: Black Girl Magic (Haymarket Books, 2018). MORE
Terrance Hayes’ recent publications include American Sonnets for My Past And Future Assassin (Penguin, 2018), and To Float In The Space Between: Drawings and Essays in Conversation with Etheridge Knight (Wave, 2018). He was awarded the National Book Award in 2010 for Lighthead (Penguin) and a MacArthur Fellowship in 2014. He is Professor of English at New York University. MORE
Dorothea Lasky is the author of six full-length collections of poetry and prose: ROME (Liveright/W.W. Norton) and Animal, Milk, Thunderbird, Black Life, and AWE, all from Wave Books. She co-wrote Astro Poets: Your Guides to the Zodiac (Flatiron Books, 2019) with the poet, Alex Dimitrov. Lasky is an assistant professor of poetry at Columbia University. MORE
Rachel McKibbens is a poet, activist, playwright, and essayist. She is the author of the poetry collections Into the Dark and Emptying Field (Small Doggies Press,2013) and Pink Elephant (Cypher Books,2009). McKibbens is a well-known member of the poetry slam community: she is a nine-time National Poetry Slam team member, and was the 2009 Women of the World Poetry Slam champion, as well as the 2011 National Underground Poetry Slam individual champion. MORE
Patricia Smith is the author of eight books of poetry, including Incendiary Art (TriQuarterly, 2017) winner of the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the 2017 Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the 2018 NAACP Image Award, and a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize. Smith’s Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah (Coffeehouse Press, 2012) won the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets—a prize Wanda Coleman won in 1999 for Bathwater Wine. MORE
Amber Tamblyn is an author, actress and director. She’s been nominated for an Emmy, Golden Globe and Independent Spirit Award for her work in television and film. She is the author of three books of poetry including the critically acclaimed best seller, Dark Sparkler. Her non-fiction collection, Era of Ignition: Coming of Age During a Time of Rage and Revolution has just been released in paperback. MORE