The Wilds—Pleasure, Power, and the Erotic—Celebrating Miah Jeffra’s American Gospel
Friday, March 10th @ Museum of Museums
7pm - 9pm Free
Miah Jeffra
Miah Jeffra is author of four books, most recently The Violence Almanac and the forthcoming novel American Gospel. Work can be seen in StoryQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, The North American Review, Barrelhouse, DIAGRAM, jubilat and many others. Miah is co-founder of Whiting Award-winning queer and trans literary collaborative, Foglifter Press, and teaches writing and decolonial studies at Santa Clara University and Sonoma State University.
About American Gospel
A low-income Baltimore neighborhood is targeted for a controversial urban renewal project—an amusement park in the theme of Baltimore itself—that forces its residents to reckon with racism, displacement, and their futures. Peter Cryer is a queer teenager who fantasizes about leaving Baltimore and the instability of his home life while also seeking a place to belong. Ruth Anne, his prickly mother, is terrorized by her estranged husband and the indecision of what to do after the wrecking ball comes through her neighborhood. Thomas, a cleric and History teacher at Peter's school, questions his vocation in the face of the neighborhood's destruction. These three voices braid together a portrait of a neighborhood in flux, the role of community and violence in our time, and the struggles of a very real and oft misunderstood city.
About The Wilds
The Wilds gathers writers who dare to write sex and joy. We imagine a radical consent culture in which an enthusiastic yes is possible. We seek a queer theory of joy, a praxis of ecstasy, a poetics and storytelling of humor, embodiment, enthusiastic consent, satisfaction, resilience, and writing that embraces desire as creative and liberatory practice. We ask: what great and small things (bodies, clothes, books) bring us pleasure, and what role pleasure have in our collective liberation.
Syr Beker
Syr Beker (they/them) is a writer, horror geek, and experience creator in search of the queer love language of climate change. They are the co-founder of Queer Cat Productions Theater Company and the Pirate Art School The Escapery. They are proud to be a Lambda Fellow in Fiction, a Tin House Scholar, a graduate of Clarion West 2018, and an associate editor of Pseudopod. They were a dom/me for hire, now they're an art top and theater producer. Sometimes they dangle from ropes like a spider. Their work can be found at SyrBeker.com, which is most definitely not haunted.
Arisa White
Arisa White is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Colby College. Most recently, she is the author of Who’s Your Daddy, co-editor of Home Is Where You Queer Your Heart, and co-author of Biddy Mason Speaks Up, the second book in the Fighting for Justice Series for young readers. Her poetry is widely published and her collections have been nominated for an NAACP Image Award, Lambda Literary Award, and have won the Per Diem Poetry Prize, Maine Literary Award, Nautilus Book Award, an Independent Publisher Book Award, and Golden Crown Literary Award. As the creator of the Beautiful Things Project, Arisa curates poetic collaborations that are rooted in Black queer women’s ways of knowing. She is a Cave Canem fellow and serves on the board of directors for Foglifter and Nomadic Press, as well as the Community Advisory Board for Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Currently, in development with composer Jessica Jones, Arisa is working on Post Pardon: The Opera. arisawhite.com
Amber Flame
Amber Flame is an interdisciplinary creative, activist and educator whose work has garnered residencies with Hedgebrook, Vermont Studio Center, and more. A former church kid from the Southwest, Flame’s work is published widely and explores spirituality and sexuality, cross-woven with themes of grief and loss, motherhood and magic, and interstitial joy. Amber Flame’s first full-length poetry collection, Ordinary Cruelty, was published in 2017 through Write Bloody Press. Flame’s second book of poetry, titled apocrifa, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press. Amber Flame is a queer Black mama just one magic trick away from growing her unicorn horn.
Jennifer Lewis
Jennifer Lewis is a writer, editor, and the publisher of Red Light Lit. Her debut short story collection, The New Low, was released in October 2022 by Nomadic Press, where her short story, "New Low," was the winner of the Bindle Award in 2018. In 2020, she won the Los Angeles Review Flash Fiction award for "Put a Teat in It." She received her MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State University in May 2015. She teaches at The Writing Salon in San Francisco.
