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Split This Rock Poetry Festival 2020 – Session Titles & Presenters

We're excited to share the list of selected sessions for Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness below. Look for the full festival schedule with session descriptions in the coming weeks. A few additional sessions are in the works and the list below is subject to change.

Online registration For Split This Rock Poetry Festival 2020 is open and Early Bird Rates are available until Friday, January 31! Online registration will close after Friday, February 28. Register online today! 

General Schedule Overview: The Festival kicks off on Thursday, March 26. The first Featured Poet reading will be held at 7 pm and doors open at 6:30 pm. We encourage you to arrive to DC in the afternoon as a pre-reading mixer is in the works! You'll be able to check-in or register for the Festival at the mixer and immediately prior to the reading. Festival activities on Friday and Saturday will begin around 9 am and end around 5 pm. Daytime sessions run for 90 minutes, with a minimum of 30 minutes between sessions. Please give yourself extra time to check in before attending your first Festival session, as lines may be long. Readings by the Festival’s featured poets are held nightly at 7 pm on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. On Thursday and Friday, readings are followed by an after-hours open mic. We hope you’ll stick around for it all! 

To be the first to know about Festival updates and announcements, sign up for Split This Rock's email list

Click on a section name to jump to it: Panel Discussions  |  Readings  |  Workshops


Panel Discussions

#PoetsAgainstWalls: (Re)Claiming their Right over the Border Narrative
Presenters: César L De León; Celina Gomez; Carolina Monsivais; Emmy Pérez

Anthology Advice: Strategies for Organizing, Editing, and Publishing Anthologies
Presenters: José Faus; Alex Martínez; Miguel M. Morales; Maria Vasquez Boyd

Chingonas on Fire in the Midwest
Presenters: Araceli Esparza; Angie Trudell Vasquez

Unraveling Whiteness: Using Poetry to Challenge White Supremacy
Presenters: Tara Campbell; Teri Ellen Cross Davis; Holly Karapetkova; Edgar Gabriel Silex; Katherine Young

De-colonize stanza / Writing in the Apocalypse: QTBIPOC embodiment & feels!
Presenters: Kay Ulanday Barrett; Angela Peñaredondo; Natalie Sharp; Mejdulene B. Shomali

Generous Spirit: Celebrating the Queer Indigenous Work of Beth Brant
Presenters: Celeste Adame; Janet McAdams; Deborah Miranda; Kim Shuck

Inherited Traumas and Contemporary Animosities: Healing the Ruptures
Presenters: Athena Kashyap; Faisal Mohyuddin; Seema Reza; Nina Sudhakar; Seema Yasmin

Jewish Poets on Liberation and Obligation
Presenters: Rosebud Ben-Oni; Chase Berggrun; Erika Meitner; Rachel Mennies; sam sax

La Cultura Cura: Social Justice Praxis in the Classroom
Presenters: Leticia Hernández-Linares; Raina J. Leon; Samuel Miranda; Amalia Ortiz

Labels and Labor: Black Writers Exploring the Political Possible
Presenters: Adrienne Christian; Nicole Higgins; Kateema Lee; Stewart Shaw; Carmin Wong

Making Sanctuary: Serving Persecuted Writers & Fostering Community
Presenters: Bewketu Seyoum; Khalil Zeigler; Lucia LoTempio

Poetry as Public Practice
Presenters: Mark Nowak; Amish Trivedi; Yolanda Wisher

Poetry in the Age of Surveillance
Presenters: Andrea Abi-Karam; Aria Aber; Marwa Helal; Philip Metres; Elisabet Velasquez

Pop Culture vs. Poetry of Witness
Presenters: Tracy Dimond; celeste doaks; Steven Leyva; Anthony Moll

Practicing Resilience: The Poetics of Diaspora and Resistance
Presenters: Sarah A. Chavez; Sáshily Kling; Miguel M. Morales; leilani portillo; Hali Sofala-Jones

Revisiting the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era
Presenters: Jacqueline Johnson; Almas Khan; Sequoia Maner; Tony Medina; Lisa Norris

Salvi Poets Write Back: On Motherland, Diaspora, & Home
Presenters: Claudia Castro Luna; Leticia Hernández-Linares; Alexandra Lytton Regalado

Spit Your Truth! Spoken Word as Radical Hope in Education
Presenters: Anthony Blacksher; Karla Cordero; Joe Limer; Angélica María Yañez

Spoken Nerd: When Fandom Meets Poetry
Presenters: Lauren Bullock; Kenny Carroll; Ashley Harris; Dwayne Lawson-Brown; Anita The Lesbian

TAKEN: Adoptees Speak Out
Presenters: Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello; Ansley Moon; Tiana Nobile; Leah Silvieus

The “I” in Intimacy: Exploring Tenderness in Turbulent Times
Presenters: Tyree Daye; Marwa Helal; Nabila Lovelace; Monica Sok

The Poetics of Anger
Presenters: Megan Alpert; Regie Cabico; Erin Hoover; Bettina Judd

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Readings

¡Nunca más y siempre pa'alante! CantoMundistxs Forge Resilience and Transformation
Presenters: Juan Luis Guzmán; Jen Hofer; Cintia Santana; Javier Zamora

A Queer Feast – Fruit, Documents, Possibilities
Presenters: Chen Chen; Jan-Henry Gray; Devyn Lorelai Mañibo; Sam Herschel Wein

Afro-Latinidad Isn’t a Trend: Disrupting One-Dimensional Understandings of Afro-Latinx Poetics
Presenters: Ariana Brown; Alejandro Heredia; Jon Jon Palacios Moore; Alan Pelaez Lopez; Dora Santana

Alongside We Travel: Contemporary Poets on Autism
Presenters: Kim Bridgford; Oliver de la Paz; Joel Dias-Porter; Sean Thomas Dougherty; Jennifer Franklin

An Intersectional Feminist Resistance Reading
Presenters: Rosebud Ben-Oni; Wendy Chin-Tanner; Shira Dentz; Allison Joseph; Venus Thrash

Ancestors and Inheritances: Furious Flower Celebrates Black Poetic Legacy
Presenters: Lauren K. Alleyne; Tara Betts; DaMaris Hill; Jacqueline Jones LaMon; L. Lamar Wilson;

Ask Me About My Uterus: A Reading for Reproductive Rights
Presenters: Teri Ellen Cross Davis; Katherine Howell; Natalie Illum; Katy Richey; Susan Scheid

Disease and Disability: Using Poetry to Reveal and Empower
Presenters: Nancy Naomi Carlson; Marlena Chertock; Ellen Aronofsky Cole; Oliver de la Paz; Jennifer Franklin

Empire and After: Five Filipino American Writers, Colonialism, and Art
Presenters: Marianne Chan; Oliver de la Paz; Eugene Gloria; Jan-Henry Gray; Michelle Peñaloza

Hold This Stone: Poets Confront the Japanese American Incarceration
Presenters: Brian Komei Dempster; W. Todd Kaneko; Mia Ayumi Malhotra; Brynn Saito; Brandon Shimoda

Indigenous Literature, Art and Thought!
Presenters: Kimberly Blaeser; Millissa Kingbird; Kateri Menominee; Maria Elena Scott (Tormey); Angie Trudell Vasquez

Muddled Myths and Fractured Fairytales for the New Millennium
Presenters: Jai Dulani; Quincy Scott Jones; Bushra Rehman; Yolanda Wisher

No there but here: A Poetics and Politics of Return
Presenters: George Abraham; Zaina Alsous; Philip Metres

Our Bodies as Land: Destruction and Renewal
Presenters: Venus Davis; Rebecca Kokitus; Lynne Schmidt; Jenna Velez

Sorrow’s Not Enough: Queering Climate Crisis
Presenters: Oliver Baez Bendorf; Tamiko Beyer; Elizabeth Bradfield; Donika Kelly; Brian Teare

The Art of Borderless Worlds: White Pine Press Poet-Translators
Presenters: Eleanor Goodman; Jennifer Kwon Dobbs; Dennis Maloney; Tzveta Sofronieva

The BreakBeat Poets Have Been Here for Decades
Presenters: Kevin Coval; Britteney Black Rose Kapri

The Elements of Spoken Word: Earth, Fire, Wind, Water
Presenters: Lady Brion; Victor Rodgers (Slangston Hughes); Kenneth Something

Two Spirits Belong Here/Lxs Dos-Espíritus Merecen Estar Aquí
Presenters: Ahanu On; Xemiyulu Tapepechul

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Workshops

Black Ladies Brunch Collective (BLBC) Presents: We Are Our Own Gods, A Workshop
Presenters: Saida Agostini; Teri Cross Davis; Katy Richey

Looking Back to Look Forward
Presenters: Becca Carson; Jaimie Stevenson; Krystal Two Bulls

Oh Shit, Navigating Difficulty and Participant Trauma in Writing Spaces
Presenters: Arhm Choi Wild; Adam Falkner; Juan Morales; Rachel Simon; Olivia Worden

Poetry as a Call for Hope, Action, and Environmental Justice
Presenters: Elizabeth Coleman; Kyle Dargan; Paul Guest; Shara McCallum

Raising Their Voices: Collaging as Confrontation (Homestead Detention Center)
Presenters: Catherine Esposito Prescott; Jen Karetnick; Mia Leonin; Caridad Moro

Reclaiming Immigrant Narratives
Presenters: Desiree C. Bailey; Daria-Ann Martineau

Revisiting & Creating Our Own Spaces of Making as BIPOC
Presenters: Ching-In Chen; Amanda Galvan Huynh; Luisa A. Igloria; Tony Robles; Tim Seibles

Shape-shifting Bodies: Somatic Rituals towards Art for Gender Justice
Presenters: Ama Codjoe; Christina Olivares; Zohra Saed; Purvi Shah; Sun Yung Shin;

Towards a Transformative Practice: Organizing Liberatory Poetry Spaces
Presenters: Isabella Borgeson; Jade Cho; Gabriel Cortez; Natasha Huey

Transembodied-ologies: Dangerous Making in Dangerous Times
Presenters: Ni'Ja Whitson

Unlearning Our Cages: How to Write into Freedom
Presenters: Amina Fatima; Gelilla Mekonnen; Marjan Naderi; Alexa Patrick; Jordan Shaibani; Takier George

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