#kwelijournal

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Vincent Toro’s debut collection, Stereo. Island. Mosaic. is available now! Learn the craft of poetry from Vincent Toro. He will lead Kweli’s new Online Poetry Workshop. Sign up today! July 24th to August 28th http://www.kwelijournal.org/online-poetry-workshop #vincenttoro #kwelijournal #kweli #poetry #poetryworkshop #nuyoricanpoetscafe #honeyourcraft #focusedplay #poetshousefellow (at Nuyorican Poets Cafe)

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Kweli is excited to announce our NOMINATION from PEN AMERICAN to nominate Emerging Fiction pieces for the PEN/ Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. The prize will be awarded to only 12 Authors and involves publication in an anthology by PEN American and a $2,000 cash prize. Kweli was invited among other great literary journals (as pictured above) to submit the pieces we ourselves have published. #kweli #kwelijournal #penamerica #emergingwriters #prize (at PEN America)

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"Every child is born a poet." But something happens when we all grow up. We can help. Vincent Toro leads the way with Kweli’s new Online Poetry Workshop. Sign up today! July 17th to August 21st http://www.kwelijournal.org/online-poetry-workshop #kwelijournal #kweli #poetry #poetryworkshop #vincenttoro #honeyourcraft #focusedplay #miguelalgarin #poetshousefellow (at Nuyorican Poets Cafe)

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Kweli founder and editor-in-chief Laura Pegram with her mentor and second mother, poet and activist June Jordan ________________________________________________________ “June always told me that the sky was my ceiling, that I could be the writer, the jazz vocalist, the visual artist. She was instrumental in teaching me the weight of every word when I was a young artist, still searching for my confidence. Her words guide me still.” - Laura Pegram ________________________________________________________#junejordan #kwelijournal #kweli #mentor #poet #artist #writer #activist

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"We need a Hubble Telescope. We don’t need body cameras. Black people need to make a Hubble Telescope and set it in the head, the arms, the eyes of every person who calls himself or herself a policeman. Because this violence, this murder, this killing is perpetuated on and on because people don’t tell the truth." - Poet Nikky Finney (pictured here.) ———————————————————————— THE EYES HAVE IT (2015): Poetry and Photography. https://vimeo.com/145695666 ———————————————————————— #blacklivesmatter #kwelijournal #theeyeshaveit #pocpoets #freddiegray #nikkifinney #kweli #poetry #photography (at Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library)

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NY Times Review on "The Song of Shank"

"The novel blends Tom’s personal history with the history of the Civil War and Reconstruction. It sagely explores themes of religion, class, art and genius, and introduces elements of magic realism (mermaids and mermen appear, as does a man who is inexplicably healed of short leg syndrome), resulting in the kind of imaginative work only a prodigiously gifted risk-taker could produce."

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Fearful Symmetry by Ansel Elkins

                                          We split fire-                                       wood. The axe                           is an instrument of joy.      How the wood loves to be released                 from itself. I ask God to knife                            us into cleanly halved                                      men. Sever me                                  at the green stem                            of our sternum. Halve                  us from each other so that I                                 may have my own                                                     bride.

This is an excerpt from Fearful Symmetry, a poetry collection, by 2014 Yale Younger Poet Prize winner Ansel Elkins.  Read the rest of her poem and others at our journal.  

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