A Reading and Conversation with Lauren K. Alleyne

Friends of the Libraries speaker series, Wednesday, April 28, 2021, 5:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m., online via Zoom (view the recording at LTS Talks)

Lauren K. Alleyne will be reading from her latest poetry collection Honeyfish and will be talking about her experiences as the Assistant Director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center.

Alleyne’s work is a poetics of witness: her poems are lyric and narrative movements toward clarity of vision. With careful attention, her poems reveal the connections between individuals and histories, bodies and spaces, emotions and actions. Within these connections, Alleyne also uncovers blank space: the things we are asked to ignore or do not allow ourselves to see. Addressing violence and loss, Alleyne exposes social injustices and the veiled power structures that perpetuate them.

The lecture will be followed by a Q&A session led by University Librarian Boaz Nadav-Manes.

This event is free and open to the public. Please register in advance. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

About the speaker:

Lauren K. Alleyne is the author of Difficult Fruit (Peepal Tree Press, 2014) and Honeyfish, (2018 Green Rose Prize, New Issues 2019), and co-editor of Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry. Her work has been widely published in journals and anthologies such as The Atlantic, Ms. Muse, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Guernica, The Caribbean Writer, and Crab Orchard Review, among others. Her work has earned several honors and awards, most recently first place in the 2016 Split This Rock Poetry Contest and a 2017 Philip Freund Prize in Creative Writing for excellence in publication. Alleyne was born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago, and is currently Assistant Director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center, and an Associate Professor of English at James Madison University.

Sponsored by The Friends of the Lehigh University Libraries.

Please be aware that there has been a nationwide increase in disruptions to virtual events. Some of these disruptive incidents could include offensive language or imagery. If this occurs, the meeting host may need to end the meeting and reschedule. Thank you for your patience as we work through these challenges.