Presented in partnership with the Newport Middle Passage Port Marker Project, poets Afua Ansong and Jacqueline Johnson will share their poetry and discuss their creative process. Through their work, they help us to question and explore themes of identity, transition, and belonging. 

Afia Ansong is a Ghanain American scholar and artist who writes poetry and teaches contemporary and traditional West African dance. A 2018 and 2015 BRIO (Bronx Recognizes its Own) recipient, she writes about the challenges of the African immigrant identity in the United States, exploring themes of transition, citizenship, and identity. Her work can be seen or is forthcoming in FOLIO, TAB, The Seventh Wave, PUBLIC POOL, Vinyl, Main Review, joINT, Frontier, and others.  

Jacqueline Johnson is a multi-disciplined artist creating in poetry, fiction writing and fiber arts. She is the author of A Woman’s Season, on Main Street Rag Press and A Gathering of Mother Tongues, published by White Pine Press, and is the winner of the Third Annual White Pine Press Poetry Award. Her work has appeared in: “Show Us Your Papers,” on Main Street Rag press, 2020, “Revisiting the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era,” Routledge 2020, “About Place Journal”, the “Langston Hughes Review,” and The Slow Down, American Public Media, October 16, 2019.  She is a Cave Canem fellow, VONA fellow, and Black Earth Institute fellow 2018–2021. Works in progress include a novel The Privilege of Memory and How to Stop a Hurricane, a collection of short stories. She is a graduate of New York University and the City University of New York. A native of Philadelphia, PA., she resides in Brooklyn, New York.

Free

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Date: 
Wednesday, July 7, 2021 – 6:00pm to 7:00pm