Store
by Audrey T. Williams
The AfroSurreal Writers Workshop of Oakland – and friends – will share from their speculative works in progress, followed by a moderated panel discussion. During the panel, three Bay Area writers and poets will speak about their San Francisco influences, share current works‑in-progress, and reveal their 2020 visions. Speculative works available for purchase at this event may include literature or art in the genres of fantasy, science fiction, myth, faerie tales, climate fiction, horror and eco-poetry. We’ll have a panel discussion and Q&A moderated by Audrey T. Williams, an Oakland-based speculative poet.
The AfroSurreal Writers Workshop of Oakland, founded by Rochelle Spencer, PhD, amplifies the voices of emerging and established writers, poets and artists who create in worlds that are described as surreal: futurist, speculative fiction, fantasy, science fiction, slipstream, horror, utopian/dystopian, weird or absurdist. Keep up with us on Facebook: @afrosurrealwriters.
Rochelle Spencer, PhD
Dr. Rochelle Spencer is author of “AfroSurrealism: The African Diaspora’s Surrealist Fiction” (Routledge 2019) and “Guardian Angels” (Nomadic Press 2019) and co-editor, with Jina Ortiz, of “All About Skin: Short Fiction by Women of Color” (University of Wisconsin Press, 2014). She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle, a former board member of the Hurston Wright Foundation, a VONA alum, a member of the International Art Critics Association (Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art, AICA), a recipient of an NEA Art Works grant, and a scholar with the Black Book Interactive Project, directed by Dr. Maryemma Graham.
Rochelle is a visiting assistant professor of English and Literature at Fisk University, has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Spelman College, San Jose State University, Laney College and LaGuardia Community College and was a griot at Bucknell University’s Griot Institute for the Study of Black Lives and Culture.
Panelists
Vernon Keeve III
Vernon Keeve III is a Virginia born writer that California molded into an educator. He lives and teaches in Oakland, Calif. His purpose is to teach the next generation the importance of relaying their personal narratives, sharing their experiences, and taking control of their destinies. He holds a MFA from California College of the Arts, and a Masters in Teaching Literature from Bard College. His writing has been published in Ishmael Reed’s Konch Online Journal, Black Girl Dangerous, Entropy and Foglifter, and Blues Arrival: Stories of the Queer Black South and Migration. He received the Zora Neale Hurston Award from Naropa University in 2012. His first book of poetry and essays, “Southern Migrant Mixtape,” was released by Nomadic Press.
Raina J. Leon, PhD
Dr. Raina J. León, Cave Canem graduate fellow (2006) and member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, CantoMundo and Macondo, has been published in over 50 publications in poetry, fiction, nonfiction and academic scholarship. Her first collection of poetry, “Canticle of Idols” (2008), was a finalist for both the Cave Canem First Book Poetry Prize (2005) and the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize (2006). Her second book, “Boogeyman Dawn” (2013), was a finalist for the Naomi Long Madgett Prize (2010). Her third book, “sombra: dis(locate),” was released in February 2016, Salmon Poetry. Her first chapbook, “profeta without refuge,” was released in September 2016 through Nomadic Press.
She is currently an associate professor of education in the Kalmanovitz School of Education at St. Mary’s College of California. She came to Saint Mary’s from the Department of Defense Education Activity, where for three years she taught military dependents in Bamberg, Germany.
Jasmine Wade
Jasmine H. Wade is a speculative fiction writer, curriculum designer and PhD student in Sacramento, California. She’s a queer time traveler, one who moves, thinks and imagines in the past, present and future at once. Her short stories have appeared in Drunken Boat, Lunch Ticket, the Running Wild Anthology of Stories, Volume 2, and others. She is an alumna of VONA/Voices and Mills College’s MFA program. Her dissertation focuses on Black and Indigenous radical aesthetic practices, and she uses speculation, poetics and critical fabulation to visualize the futures activists are working to create. Her stories and graduate work play with the ideas of ghosts, time travel, apocalypse and more in the pursuit of a better world.
Join us for the Authors of Black Speculative Fiction Panel on Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2020, from 5 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the San Francisco Main Library, 100 Larkin St., in the Latino/Hispanic Meeting Room B, San Francisco, CA 94102
The following writers will also be reading at the event: Radhiyah Ayobami, Kwan Booth, Tara Christina, Alan Saint Clark, Elwin Michael Cotman, Jenee Darden, Thaddeus Howze, Sumiko Saulson and Dera R Jones Williams.
Audrey T. Williams can be reached at audthentic@gmail.com.
