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Quenton Baker with Anastacia-Renee and Jane Wong
Quenton Baker, beloved local poet and friend of the store, returns to Readings Room stage for the launch of their latest poetry collection, ballast. Fellow poets and friends Anastacia-Renee and Jane Wong will join him onstage for a celebratory night of readings.
ballast is a poetic sequence using the 1841 slave revolt aboard the brig Creole as a lens through which to view the vitality of Black lives and the afterlife of slavery.
In 1841, the only successful, large-scale revolt of American-born enslaved people erupted on the ship Creole. 135 people escaped chattel slavery that day. The event was recounted in US Senate documents, including letters exchanged between US and British consulates in The Bahamas and depositions from the white crew on the ship. There is no known record or testimony from the 135 people who escaped. Their story has been lost to time and indifference. Quenton Baker’s ballast is an attempt at incomplete redress.
Quenton Baker is a poet, educator, and Cave Canem fellow. Their current focus is black interiority and the afterlife of slavery. Their work has appeared in The Offing, Jubilat, Vinyl, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. They are a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and the recipient of the 2018 Arts Innovator Award from Artist Trust. They were a 2019 Robert Rauschenberg Artist in Residence and a 2021 NEA Fellow. They are the author of we pilot the blood (The 3rd Thing, 2021) and ballast (Haymarket Books, 2023).
Anastacia-Renee is an award-winning cross-genre writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, TEDX speaker and podcaster. Renee is the author of (v.) (Black Ocean Press), Forget It (Black Radish Press), and Answer(Me) (Winged City Chapbook Press). She has received fellowships and residencies from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, VONA, Artist Trust, Jack Straw, Ragdale, Mineral School, Hypatia in the Woods and The New Orleans Writers Residency. Anastacia-Renee's work has been anthologized in, Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry, Spirited Stone, Lessons from Kubotas Garden, Seismic, Seattle City of Literature, and her poetry, fiction and non-fiction has been in Foglifter, Cascadia Magazine, Pinwheel, The Fight and the Fiddle, Glow, The A-Line, Ms. Magazine, Spark, Obsidian Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora, Crab Creek Review, Alta, Catapult and many more.
Jane Wong is the author of a memoir called Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City (Tin House, 2023). She also wrote two poetry collections: How to Not Be Afraid of Everything (Alice James, 2021) and Overpour (Action Books, 2016). She grew up on the Jersey shore in a restaurant and is an Associate Professor at Western Washington University where she teaches creative writing and Asian American literature.
Event Links
Website: https://go.evvnt.com/1621301-0
