Yeva Johnson, Author : It Takes a Village to Support a Black Poet
Channel: San Francisco Public Library
Date: 13/02/2024

An evening of readings from the village that nurtures poet Yeva Johnson.  

This stellar line-up of poets and writers are in community and care with Yeva Johnson, Friends of the San Francisco Public Library Brown Handler Writer's Resident. Come hear inspiring words from writers D’mani Thomas, Edward Gunawan, Karen Llagas, Lorraine Bonner, Mel Y. Chen, Nicky Andrews, Tamiko Wong, Tijanna O. Eaton, Zia Wang and Yeva Johnson.  

The Residency, funded by Lisa Brown and Daniel Handler, is designed to nurture emerging and established San Francisco based writers by guaranteeing them access to free, adequate space and bringing them into direct collaboration with the Library for literary activities. This program honors the vital connection between the public Library and the literary world. 

D'mani Thomas (he \ they) is a writer, nerd and aspiring film maker from Oakland, California. He’s interested in the tiny moments that capture attention spans. They have received fellowships from UC Berkeley’s Art & Research Center, The Watering Hole, Foglifter and others. D’mani’s debut chapbook, Grown-up Elementary, was published last year. Outside of poetry, catch them studying horror movies, dancing, and eating too many fries.  

Edward Gunawan [he/they] is a queer Indonesian-born Chinese writer and curator. The author of chapbooks The Way Back (winner of Start a Riot! Prize, Foglifter Press, 2022) and Press Play (Sweet Lit, 2020), Edward has also completed over 25 feature and short films as writer, producer, actor and/or director. Residing on Ohlone land in Oakland, CA, Edward is the founder/co-host of HOME MADE @ ARTogether.   

Karen Llagas’s new poetry collection, All of Us Are Cleaved, is recently published by Nomadic Press in 2023. Her first collection of poetry, Archipelago Dust, was published by Meritage Press in 2010. A recipient of a RHINO Founder's Prize, Filamore Tabios, Sr. Memorial Poetry Prize & a Hedgebrook residency, her poems and reviews have also appeared in various journals and anthologies. She lectures at UC Berkeley and divides her time between San Francisco and Los Angeles. 

Lorraine Bonner is a sculptor, poet and retired physician. When she is not in the studio she spends time in her yard, creating a garden that she hopes will keep her self-sufficient in vegetables and fruits year-round. Her written and visual work bears witness to trauma, personal and political, in the service of planetary liberation. 

Mel Y. Chen is a professor of gender studies and lover of critters. Author of Animacies and Intoxicated, they are now working on It, a series of drawings, music and essays. They are on the board of the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project, and part of a small and sustaining queer/trans of color arts collective. 

Nicky Andrews is a Māori writer living on Ramaytush Ohlone territory. Their writing has been supported by VONA, Kearny Street Workshop, Kenyon Review, Rooted & Written, and Tin House. Their debut chapbook, Māori Maid Difficult, is out now with Tram Editions. 

Tamiko Wong was born and raised in San Francisco with roots in Japantown, Chinatown, and the Richmond district. Her work has been included in Standing Strong! Fillmore & Japantown, Lunchbox Moments, I Am a Warrior, on Pacific Time, and in AsianWeek. She writes poetry, memoir and song. Tamiko has also produced podcasts and zines. 

Tijanna O. Eaton (Tə-zha-na) is a Pushcart Prize-nominated Black, queer butch writer whose work appears in Honey Literary, Noyo Review, Yellow Arrow Vignette, Panorama Journal and elsewhere. She received the 2021 Unicorn Authors Club inaugural Alumni award and is a 2023 Rooted & Written Fellow. Tijanna's nonfiction memoir, BOLT Cutters, is the story of her 12 arrests in three years in the early 1990s during the height of the crack epidemic.  

Yeva Johnson, a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and musician, whose work appears in Bellingham Review, Obsidian, sin cesar, Sinister Wisdom, and elsewhere, explores interlocking caste systems and possibilities for human co-existence in our biosphere. Yeva is a current Brown Handler Writer’s Resident. Her debut chapbook, Analog Poet Blues, is available at Black Lawrence Press. 

Zia Wang is Indian American and part of the third generation of her family from East Africa. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in The American Journal of Poetry, SWWIM, and Drunken Boat among others, and was also selected as a runner-up in the 2023 New Orleans Review Poetry Contest. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, two daughters and an orange cat.