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The Poets and Storytellers of These Black Bodies Are … on ZOOM

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Monday, January 15, 2024

3:00-4:30 PM PT

Free and open to the public. All are welcome.

Please register to attend: http://tinyurl.com/TBBAV

Please join Inlandia Institute and Blacklandia on Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2024 for an exceptional literary and cultural event. On Monday, January 15, from 3:00-4:30 PM PT, the poets and storytellers of the Blacklandia anthology These Black Bodies Are … will read and share their work on ZOOM with contributors from across the county. This is the culminating event in a series of readings that began on Juneteenth 2023, and one you won’t want to miss.

These Black Bodies Are …  is a collection of stories, poems, and essays by Black writers from the Inland Empire and beyond.

Cover art for the anthology features a painting by internationally-acclaimed artist Charles Bibbs, Shared Knowledge. Bibbs’s art is featured at Riverside Art Museum in a landmark exhibition that fills three galleries and presents a range of work from Bibbs’s personal art collection as well as the artist’s own original paintings and drawings. The exhibition runs from November 3, 2023 – March 10, 2024.

Anthology editor Romaine Washington, M. Ed., is the author of Purgatory Has an Address (Bamboo Dart Press) and Sirens in Her Belly (Jamii Publications). She has been published in a wide variety of anthologies and periodicals, including Inlandia Institute’s San Bernardino Singing anthology and “Cholla Needles 32, 36 and 39.”

Ms. Washington is a fellow of The Watering Hole, South Carolina, and the Inland Area Writing Project at the University of California, Riverside. She was a public school educator for over twenty years, and has developed a social justice curriculum available for free on her website: https://www.romainewashington.com/. The proud mother of two sons, Romaine Washington is a native Californian from San Bernardino who currently resides in the Inland Empire.