Nomadic Press @ City Lights

City Lights celebrates Nomadic Press

with Tureeda Mikell, Josiah Luis Alderete, Ayodele Nzinga, Tongo Eisen-Martin, Genny Lim, James Cagney, Dr. James P. (Jimmy) Garrett, music by Azuah

Nomadic Press is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization that supports the works of emerging and established writers and artists. Through publications (including translations) and performances, Nomadic Press aims to build community among artists across disciplines.

To learn more visit: www.nomadicpress.org

Educator, consultant, poet, griot/elocutionist/story medicine woman, Tureeda Mikell began working the healing arts in 1977 via poetry, storytelling, and QiGong energy therapy. Mikell is the founder of Tree of Life Health Literacy Project and works in collaboration with California Poets in the Schools. In 2018, Mikell was the Eth-Noh-Tec NuWa Delegate from the US to Beijing, China, in Gengcun Village of renowned storytellers in collaboration with the University of Beijing on mission to heal cultural boundaries. Mikell has been a featured reader with Kim Shuck, poet laureate of San Francisco, California, presented Al Young (named poet laureate of California in 2015) with the lifetime achievement award at the 2018 Berkeley Poetry Festival, and has opened for Saul Williams at Grand Lake Theater in Oakland. She is a BAWP Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education, has worked and read with the late Amiri Baraka via EastSide Arts Alliance, and is one of the co-founders of the Black Writers Conference in Otisville, New York.  Synchronicity: The Oracle of Sun Medicine (Nomadic Press, 2020) is her first full-length collection of poetry.

Josiah Luis Alderete is a full blooded Pocho spanglish speaking poet from La Area Bahia who learned to write poetry in the kitchen of his Mama’s Mexican restaurant. He first began performing his poetry in San Francisco’s Mission District at the infamous Cafe Babar’s Thursday night readings and was one of the founding members of San Francisco’s outspoken word troupe, The Molotov Mouths. He is also a radio insurgente whose stories have appeared on KALW’s “Crosscurrents” and whose show, “The Spanglish Power Hour,” aired on KPFA. He curates  and hosts the monthly Latinx reading series Speaking Axolotl at Nomadic Press in Oakland. Josiah Luis Alderete’s first book of poems, Baby Axolotls y Old Pochos, is forthcoming from Black Freighter Press.

Ayodele Nzinga is a renaissance woman. A writer, lyricist, director, producer, actress, dramaturg, and social architect; her motto is, “I create, therefore I am.” Her work appears in Juice Magazine, VISION Magazine, Fourteen Hills, Pan African Journal of Poetry, Environmental Terrorist Anthology, Say it Loud, Black Magnolias Literary Journal, and ChickenBones: A Journal. Her book, Horse Eaters, is available from Nomadic Press, and her full-length collection, SorrowLand Oracle, is forthcoming from Nomadic Press in 2020.

Originally from San Francisco, Tongo Eisen-Martin is a poet, movement worker, and educator. His book, Someone’s Dead Already, was nominated for a California Book Award. His latest book, Heaven Is All Goodbyes (published by the City Lights Pocket Poets series), was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and won a California Book Award and an American Book Award.

Genny Lim is a San Francisco Jazz Poet Laureate emeritus. She has collaborated with such jazz legends as the late Max Roach, Herbie Lewis, and Eddie Marshall, as well as Bay Area musicians Broun Fellinis, John Santos, Anthony Brown, Francis Wong, and Jon Jang. She has appeared at jazz festivals throughout the US and poetry festivals in Venezuela, Italy, and Bosnia.

Lim’s award-winning play, Paper Angels, was the first Asian American play aired on PBS’s American Playhouse in 1985 and has been produced throughout the US, Canada, and China. She is the author of five poetry collections—Winter Place, Child of War, Paper Gods and Rebels, KRA!, La Morte Del Tempo—and is the co-author of Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, which won the American Book Award. A recipient of a SF Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship, Lim is currently at work on a book of poetry about Jazz legends from the Behop Era and beyond.

James Cagney is a poet from Oakland, California. He has appeared at venues in throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. Cagney is the 2019 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award winner for his first book, Black Steel Magnolias In the Hour of Chaos Theory (Nomadic Press, 2018). More of James’ writing can be found at TheDirtyRat.blog.

Dr. James P. (Jimmy) Garrett is a long-time scholar activist and writer who was instrumental in the development of the academic field of Black/Ethnic Studies. Along with such major literary artists as Amiri Baraka (a.k.a. Leroi Jones) and Sonia Sanchez, he was a major contributor to the establishment  of the Black Arts Movement. Dr. Garrett’s plays, short fiction, and social essays have been published in Black Scholar, Journal of Pan African Studies, and the seminal BAM collection, Black Fire. James Garrett is presently at work on a  memoir of his life in political movements in the US, Africa, and the Americas from the 1960s to the present.

Azuah’s music weaves roots in alternative folk and soul with a poet’s sensibility and an unforgettable voice to create an infectious sound all her own. A Bay Area native, she has played all over the West Coast from the Roxy in Los Angeles to stages in Oakland and San Francisco. Known for her evocative lyrics and haunting melodies, Azuah captures the listener’s ear from first note to last strum with a sound that can only come from the depths of an old soul.