Saturday Night Special presents: (em)Power(ment)

POWER. EMPOWER. EMPOWERMENT. Take your pick. This month SNS explores all kinds of power. From self-empowerment, to empowering others, to the powers that be, to historical power. Personal, political, righteous, economic, systemic, authoritarian, power for good or ill. You can go big or small. The power to pick up the pen, speak out, make art, make dinner, change and grow, the power to vote, the power to choose. Choose what moves you. Share what empowers you. Or what has disempowered you. Write something new. Or don’t. I’m not the boss of you.

Share your poems, stories, comedic sketches, songs, or dances, on our (optional) theme (or any topic).

Each reader will have 3 minutes maximum. For prose writers this is about one and a half double-spaced pages.

JULY FEATURES: Thea Matthews & Cassandra Dallett

SATURDAY, JULY 25, 2020
7 – 9:30 pm
Hosted by: Hollie Hardy

SIGN UP starts one week in advance, on July 18. Requests added in the order received until the list is full.

To sign up, put your request to read in the event comments, or direct message Hollie Hardy. Please time your reading & keep it to 3 minutes max.

ALL ATTENDEES: To prevent being mistaken for a Zoom bomber and blocked, RSVP on FB, and use your real full name on Zoom. If you are new and unknown to host, please reach out in advance so I can vet you, and put you on the safe list.

We will be using the Waiting Room feature and only letting in people we can verify.

ZOOM INFO:

Meeting ID: 969 9282 4045
Password: 838791

Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android: https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/96992824045?pwd=N215UTFaTUFaUUV5VUhadUc2Q1ZOUT09
Password: 838791

Or iPhone one-tap (US Toll): +16699006833,96992824045#

AUTHOR BIOS:

Born and raised in San Francisco, California, Thea Matthews is a queer Black Indigenous Mexican poet, black feminist, educator, and activist. She writes on the complexities of humanity, grief, and resiliency. Her debut poetry collection Unearth [The Flowers] was published by Red Light Lit Press in 2020; and she has work published in Atlanta Review, Foglifter Journal, The Rumpus, and others. Currently, she is an MFA candidate for Poetry at New York University; and is the poetry editor for For Women Who Roar™. More info at www.theamatthews.com

Cassandra Dallett is a five-time Pushcart nominee. She has been published in over a hundred anthologies and journals.

Cassandra reads often around the Bay Area, hosts the monthly writing workshop On Two Six, is a facilitator at MOWW, (Mills Oakland Writers Workshop) hosts The Badass Bookworm Podcast, (iTunes, Spotify, Soundcloud, Stitcher, YouTube) and co-hosts and co-curates the quarterly reading series MoonDrop Productions with Kelechi Ubozoh, as well as her own monthly Oakland based reading series, The Badass Bookworm’s Lit Loft.

After three self-published chapbooks Cassandra Dallett’s first full-length book of poetry Wet Reckless(Manic D Press) was released in 2014. In 2015, she authored five chapbooks, one of them, On Sunday, A Finch (Nomadic Press) was nominated for a California Book Award, 2018 brought the release of another full-length collection, Collapse, also on Nomadic Press, also nominated for a CA Book Award. Her most recent book, A Pretty Little Wilderness has just been released from Be About It Press.