Last night, PBQ soldiered on and hosted its monthly reading at the Black Sheep Pub in Philadelphia with Anne-Adele Wight, Cynthia Dewi Oka, Lillian Dunn, and Brad Windhauser.
First up, we had Lillian Dunn, program manager of SPACES and co-founder of Apiary Magazine who shared with us poetry on the small details of beauty around Philadelphia, like blue chicory in an abandoned lot. Next, Brad Windhauser, Associate Professor of Writing at Temple University, read excerpts from Intersection (2016), a novel detailing a fictional bike accident but a very real contemplation on gentrification in cities such as Philadelphia. Anne-Adele Wight followed, reading poetry from her book The Age of Greenhouses (2016) that infuses topics such as climate change and bio-luminescence into “surreal, environmental poetry.” We ended the night with Cynthia Dewi Oka, who chose poems about her parent’s migration from an Indonesian dictatorship and her own thoughts on the 2016 presidential election to remind us of the power of writing in times of strife. Yeah, she slayed the room.
It felt good to be together, even though it was hard. We thank our readers for a wonderful night of poetry and fiction and we thank all of our listeners who were present. Join us for another reading at the Black Sheep Pub on December 12!