Voices for Resistance

Join co-hosts Straw Dog Writers Guild and Forbes Library for our annual Voices for Resistance on Wednesday, June 14th, 7:00-8:30pm via Zoom.

Register HERE.

Reader Bios:

Sejal Shah is the author of award-winning debut essay collection, This Is One Way to Dance (University of Georgia Press). Her writing has appeared in Brevity, Conjunctions, the Guardian, Guernica, the Kenyon Review, Lit Hub, and others. Her short story collection, How to Make Your Mother Cry: fictions, a genre queer book with images, poems, & a soundtrack, is forthcoming from West Virginia University Press in 2024. The aim of Sejal’s work is to hold space for questions and healing, especially around grief, memory, and mental health. She lives on unceded Haudenosaunee land in Western New York, also known as Rochester, New York.

Diane Gilliam has published four poetry collections: Dreadful Wind & Rain, Kettle Bottom, One of Everything, and Recipe for Blackberry Cake, a chapbook. Her first novel, Linney Stepp, came out in February 2023 from Saddle Road Press. Her work has earned a Pushcart Prize, the Ohioana Library Association Book of the Year in Poetry, the 2008 Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing, and the Gift of Freedom for the A Room of Her Own Foundation.

Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki is an African speculative fiction writer, editor & publisher from Nigeria. He has won the Nebula, Otherwise, Nommo, British & World Fantasy awards and been a finalist in the Hugo, Locus, Sturgeon, British Science Fiction and NAACP Image awards. His works have appeared in Asimov’s, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Uncanny Magazine, Tordotcom, Galaxy’s Edge, and others. He edited the Bridging Worlds, Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction anthology and co-edited the Dominion, and Africa Risen anthologies. He was a guest of honour at the Afrofuturism themed, 44th International Conference For The Fantastic In the Arts where he announced the new genre he created, Afropantheology.

Lisbeth White is a writer and ritualist living on S’klallam and Chimacum lands of Port Townsend, WA. She is the author of the poetry collection American Sycamore (Perugia Press) and co-editor of the anthology Poetry as Spellcasting: Poems, Essays, and Prompts for Manifesting Liberation and Reclaiming Power (North Atlantic Books).

Kelly Link is the author of the collections Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, Pretty Monsters, and Get in Trouble. Her short stories have been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Best American Short Stories, and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. She is a 2018 MacArthur Fellow and has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. She and Gavin J. Grant have co-edited a number of anthologies, including multiple volumes of The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and, for young adults, Steampunk! and Monstrous Affections. She is the co-founder of Small Beer Press and co-edits the occasional zine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. She lives with her husband, daughter, dog, and chickens in Northampton, MA..

James Tate Hill is the author of a memoir, Blind Man’s Bluff (W. W. Norton), a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a Washington Independent Review of Books Favorite Book of 2021. His fiction debut, Academy Gothic, won the Nilsen Literary Prize for a First Novel.

And our emcee for the evening is Neema Acashia: Neema Avashia is the daughter of Indian immigrants, and was born and raised in southern West Virginia. She has been an educator and activist in the Boston Public Schools since 2003, and was named a City of Boston Educator of the Year in 2013. Her first book, Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place, published by West Virginia University Press in March, has been called “A graceful exploration of identity, community, and contradictions” by Scalawag. The book was named Best LGBTQ Memoir of 2022 by BookRiot, was one of the New York Public Library’s Best Books of 2022, and is a Lambda Literary Award finalist. She lives in Boston with her partner, Laura, and her daughter, Kahani.