Join us for live readings and a community dialogue with 13 Black poets featured in the critically-acclaimed anthology Black Fire This Time, Vol. 1. The event is also the premiere of the Black Fire This Time Touring Exhibition, a multimedia showcase. Book signing to follow.

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Celebrating the history and legacy of the Black Arts Movement, this anthology contains the work of over 100 Black poets and writers and the last living legends of the movement, including Sonia Sanchez, Ishmael Reed, Eugene B. Redmond and Askia Touré. This intergenerational collection is a conversation bridging the founders of the movement with contemporary writers in the tradition.

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This event is hosted by Heather Buchanan of Aquarius Press and co-presented by the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library and Litquake. Copies of Black Fire This Time are available for purchase from the MoAD Bookstore.

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Featured Poets

At San Francisco State University in the 1960s, Judy Juanita joined fellow student protesters to revolutionize American higher education and create the nation’s first Black studies department. Her semi autobiographical debut novel, Virgin Soul (Viking, 2013), features a young woman in the 60s who joins the Black Panther Party. Her stories appear in Oakland Noir, Crab Orchard Review, The Female Complaint, Imagination & Place: an anthology, Tartt Six and Tartt Seven. Her writing focuses on Black politics, culture and art. Her play, Life is a Carousel, was featured at Beyond Baroque in Venice in 2019, a Black woman academic argues with the forgotten founder of Black Studies about the academy, Black Studies and the struggle. This play is included in Juanita’s book Homage to the Black Arts Movement: A Handbook (EquiDistance, 2018). Juanita’s twenty-odd plays have been produced in the Bay Area, L.A. and NYC.

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Jewelle Gomez (Cape Verdean/Ioway/Wampanoag) is a writer and activist and author of the double Lambda Award-winning novel, The Gilda Stories. Her adaptation of the book for the stage, Bones & Ash: A Gilda Story, was performed by the Urban Bush Women company in 13 U.S. cities. She is the recipient of a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, two California Arts Council fellowships and an Individual Artist Commission from the San Francisco Arts Commission. She has served on literature panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Illinois Arts Council and the California Arts Council.

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devorah major is a California-born “granddaughter of immigrants, documented and undocumented who works as a writer, editor, writing coach, spoken word performer, recording artist, and poetry professor.”The Poet-in-Residence of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, major has toured internationally in places such as Northern and Southern Italy, Bosnia, Jamaica, Venezuela, Belgium, England and Wales, and throughout the United States both performing her poetry and serving on panels speaking on African American poetry, Beat Poetry, and poetry of resistance. In 2015, major premiered her play, Classic Black: Voices of 19th Century African-Americans at the S.F. International Arts Festival. Her most recent poetry collection is califia’s daughter (Willow Books, 2020).

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Tongo Eisen-Martin is the Poet Laureate of San Francisco, California. He is the author of Heaven Is All Goodbyes (City Lights Books, 2017), which was shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize, received the California Book Award for Poetry, an American Book Award, and a PEN Oakland Book Award. He is also the author of someone’s dead already (Bootstrap Press, 2015). Blood on the Fog, his newest collection of poems, was published as volume 62 in the City Lights Pocket Poets Series in September 2021.

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Mark Allan Davis is a native New Yorker and an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies in Black Performance Studies/Dramatic Literature and Music/Theatre History at San Francisco State University’sCollege of Ethnic Studies. His explorations and research focus on the politics of the black body on stage and in dramatic literature, Black Lives Matter, the Politics of African-American Performance on Racial & Social Movements. Minstrelsy and Vaudeville on Broadway Song & Dance, as well as the reemergence and rediscovery of the impact and evolution of the Black Arts Movement on contemporary theatre &dance creation. Mr. Davis is an Original Cast Member of The Lion King on Broadway and is an accomplished director/choreographer, & dramaturg, and playwright, both domestically and internationally.

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Lakiba Pittman is a poet, creative artist, educator, and business consultant. In 2020, she opened as a feature guest poet at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) Open Mic Series in San Francisco. She has exhibited her art with The Black Woman is God art exhibits for several years in San Francisco and will be one of the featured artists at the exhibit at SomARTS in 2022. Her art has also been featured at the African American Art & Cultural Center in San Francisco. She is a Professor at Menlo College where she teaches Diversity in the Workplace, Culture in Media, and Race & Racism.

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‍Venus Jones is the founder of SHE ROSE™, an acclaimed author, performance poet, TEDx speaker and mentor. Her Kwanzaa iPhone app, full of poetic affirmations, has been downloaded in 90 countries. She’s the author of three poetry books and four spoken word albums. Her work has been endorsed by the legendary Langston Hughes family. Her one-woman-show, Poetic Soldier, was dubbed “Most Inspiring Solo Performance” at the Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival. Her one act play Race and War: an awkward conversation was featured at the Tampa Bay Theatre Festival.

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‍Meilani Clay is a writer, educator, and mama from Oakland, CA. A graduate of Howard University and the University of San Francisco’s Urban Education and Social Justice program, as well as a current student of SF State’s Creative Writing program, she strives to be forever in school. Meilani bridges worlds with her words and will one day build a fort out of books written by Black people.

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Bryant B. Bolling has a Masters of Art in Musicology and a Bachelor of Science degree in Music Education from Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD. Bolling is the founder and band leader of the Bryant Bolling Quartet. He has received several grants from the Akonadi Foundation to create programs that address social conditions in the Oakland communities, "Love Will Find A Way" and "Stop The Violence."Numerous publications have been written on Bolling's musical career.

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Karla Brundage is a Bay Area based poet, activist, and educator with a passion for social justice. Born in Berkeley, California in the summer of love to a Black mother and white father, Karla spent most of her childhood in Hawaii where she developed a deep love of nature. She is the founder of West Oakland to West Africa Poetry Exchange (WO2WA), which has facilitated cross-cultural exchange between Oakland and West African poets. Karla is a board member of the Before Columbus Foundation, which provides recognition and a wider audience for the wealth of cultural and ethnic diversity that constitutes American writing. Her poetry, short stories and essays have been widely anthologized.

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Landon Smith lives in Oakland, CA, but was born in L.A. and grew up in San Jose, CA. He has performed poetry in Oakland, New York, Detroit, Berkeley, Bowery Poetry’s virtual No Desk Concert, and the Santa Clara Poet Laureate Inaugural Poetry Reading. His work has been published widely. He hones his craft weekly with the Patrice Lumumba Writing Group based out of the East Side Arts Alliance in Oakland and is currently a full-time faculty member at Chabot College.

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‍Zakiyyah G.E. Capehart is a writer, published poet, storyteller, performance artist, visual artist, and radio producer and host. Capehart’s poetry is published in many anthologies and has been shared internationally. Her artistic skills combined with a medical background, allow her to produce shows that educate and heal the community. Capehart currently resides with her husband, Bryant, in Oakland, CA.

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Poet/Playwright/Multi-Percussionist/Photographer/Teacher Avotcja has been published in English and Spanish in the USA, Mexico and Europe, and in more anthologies than she remembers. She is an award winning poet and multi-instrumentalist who has opened for Betty Carter in New York City, Peru's Susana Baca at San Francisco’s Encuentro Popular and Cuba’s Gema y Pável and played with Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Bobi & Luis Cespedes, and John Handy.

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"The Town Crier," Raymond Nat Turner, is a NYC poet privileged to have read at the Harriet Tubman Centennial Symposium in Auburn, NY where he is considered a “Special Son.” Turner is the artistic director of the stalwart JazzPoetry Ensemble, UpSurge! and has appeared at numerous festivals and venues including the Monterey Jazz Festival and Panafest in Ghana, West Africa. He is Poet-in-Residence at Black Agenda Report. He is also a frequent contributor to Dissident Voice, Struggle, Monthly Review and other online and print publications. Turner has opened for luminaries such as James Baldwin, People’s Advocate Cynthia McKinney, movement sportswriter Dave Zirin, and CA Congresswoman Barbara Lee following her lone vote against attacking Afghanistan. He describes himself as " a Cultural Worker my 97 year-old NYC mentor dubbed the “Town Crier;” and "I've always thought in terms of creating content in service of the struggle for social change..."

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Heather Buchanan, Host, is an award-winning publisher and producer. She is the publisher of Black FireThis Time and producer of its national tour.

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This program is presented in partnership with Friends of the San Francisco Public Library and Litquake.

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