The Betsy Writer's Room and O, Miami Poetry Festival present a reading with Cave Canem Director, poet Nicole Sealey and introducing the Cave Canem 2018 Chapbook Poetry Prize Winner, Layla Benitez. Hosted by P. Scott Cunningham, Founder and Director of O, Miami Poetry Festival.
Founded by Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady in 1996 to remedy the under-representation and isolation of African American poets in the literary landscape, Cave Canem Foundation is a home for the many voices of African American poetry and is committed to cultivating the artistic and professional growth of African American poets.
The event is free to attend but your RSVP is required.
ABOUT THE POETS
Nicole Sealey is the author of Ordinary Beast, finalist for the 2018 PEN Open Book Award, and The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named, winner of the 2015 Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. Her other honors include a Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant, an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant, the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from The American Poetry Review, a Daniel Varoujan Award and the Poetry International Prize, as well as fellowships from CantoMundo, Cave Canem, MacDowell Colony and the Poetry Project. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming to Best American Poetry 2018, The New Yorker, The New York Times and elsewhere. Nicole holds an MLA in Africana studies from the University of South Florida and an MFA in creative writing from New York University. She is the executive director at Cave Canem Foundation, Inc.
Layla Benitez-James is a poet and translator living in Spain. Her work has appeared in The San Antonio Express-News, The San Antonio Current’s Flash Fiction series, Acentos Review, Plaza: Dialogues in Language and Literature, Matter, Guernica, and Autostraddle. Poems have appeared in translation into Spanish in Revista Kokoro and La Galla Ciencia Numero IV with bilingual presentations in Spain including El Tren de los Poetas in Cuenca, Los Lunes Literarios, La Galla Ciencia, Café Zalacaín in Murcia, and La poesía es noticia: Moth & Rust / Óxido y polilla, una sesión de poemas en inglés y español in Alicante.