BPR Midterm Chapbook Release Party

Berkeley Poetry Review will be holding a release party for the third issue of our chapbook series: MIDTERM 3 – CIRCUITS, including poems from Leila Weefur, Leena Joshi, Colleen Baran, Louise Akers, Jennifer Soong, and Tess Brown-Lavoie. The reading will be hosted at E.M. Wolfman General Interest Small Bookstore @ 410 13th St, Oakland, @ 8pm. Snacks & beverages & chapbooks provided!!! Come celebrate with us ✨

Our wonderful readers for the night include: Leena Joshi, Nathalie Khankan, and Leila Weefur. Bios below!

LEENA JOSHI is an artist and writer currently based in Oakland, California. Their poetry, essay, and visual art practice consider the lateral roots of affect, gender, labor, and desire within a transmedia practice of world building. Leena’s writing can be found in The Felt, Gramma, Monday: The Jacob Lawrence Gallery Journal, Tagvverk, La Norda Specialo, Poor Claudia, and bluestockings magazine, among others.

NATHALIE KHANKAN is the author of quiet orient riot, to be published by Omnidawn in 2020, and winner of the Omnidawn 1st/2nd Book Prize, judge Dawn Lundy Martin. Her work appears in Berkeley Poetry Review and Crab Creek Review, and is upcoming in jubilat.

She teaches Arabic language and literature in the Near Eastern Studies Department at UC Berkeley.

LEILA WEEFUR (She/They/He) is an artist, writer, and curator who lives and works in Oakland, CA.

Through video, installation, writing, and lecture-performances they examine the performativity intrinsic to systems of belonging present in our lived experiences. The work brings together concepts of the sensorial memory, abject, hyper surveillance, and the erotic. It implicates the viewer by controlling the mobility of the audience through fabricated environmental discomfort and strict rules of engagement. The site-specific installations are architectural interventions made up of constructed walls and tempered glass, simulating systems of control and willful participation.

Weefur is a recipient of the Hung Liu award, the Murphy & Cadogan award, and the Walter & Elise Haas Creative Work Fund. They have worked with local and national institutions including SFMOMA, The Wattis Institute, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and Smack Mellon in Brooklyn, New York. Weefur is a member of The Black Aesthetic and a lecturer at SFAI and UC Berkeley.