Zaina Alsous and Wendy Trevino, Mazza Writer in Residence, reading from their work

Under the heading “A border, like race, is a cruel fiction”—a line drawn from one of the poems in Wendy Trevino‘s remarkable book, Cruel Fiction—Trevino, The Poetry Center’s Mazza Writer in Residence for Spring 2020, will be joined as part of her week-long residency by Palestinian poet Zaina Alsous, for two public events. Following their Thursday April 23 reading and conversation at The Poetry Center, on Friday April 24, they each read their work at Moe’s Books on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. Arrive early, to find some books in this incredible bookstore—and to make sure you get a seat! Supported by the Sam Mazza Foundation, these events are free and open to the public.

Zaina Alsous is a prison abolitionist, a daughter of the Palestinian diaspora, and a movement worker in South Florida. Her poetry, reviews, and essays have been published in POETRY Magazine, The Kenyon Review, the New Inquiry, Adroit, and elsewhere. She edits for Scalawag Magazine, a publication dedicated to unsettling dominant narratives of the U.S. South. Her chapbook Lemon Effigies won the Rick Campbell Chapbook Prize and was published by Anhinga Press. Her first full-length collection of poetry, A Theory of Birds, won the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize, selected by Hayan Charara and Fady Joudah, and was published by the University of Arkansas Press, Fall 2019. Born and raised in North Carolina, she currently lives in Miami, Florida, while pursuing an MFA in poetry and teaching undergraduate writing at the University of Miami. More at zainaalsous.com

Wendy Trevino was born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. She now lives and works in San Francisco. Her chapbook 128-131 was published by Perfect Lovers Press in 2013. Her chapbook Brazilian Is Not a Race was published by Commune Editions in 2016, followed by her first full-length book, Cruel Fiction, also from Commune Editions, 2018. Her chapbook #YourHarveyWeinstein was also published by Spoilsport Editions—an online press she started with writer Oki Sogumi—in 2017. Her poems have appeared in various print and online journals, including Abraham Lincoln, Armed Cell, the Capilano Review, LIES, Macaroni Necklace, Mondo Bummer, ELDERLY, and Open House. Selected as The Poetry Center’s Mazza Writer in Residence for Spring 2020, Wendy is not an experimental writer.