HTBAF: The Long Road Home
January 28th, 8pm
ON ZOOM
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88432907308
Meeting ID: 884 3290 7308
With the year 2020 behind us and 2021 off to a bumpy start, we have a long way home.
STORYTELLERS:
Robert Gibbons, a native Floridian, came to New York City in 2007 in search of his muse Langston Hughes and found a vibrant contemporary poetry community at the Cornelia Street Cafe, the Green Pavilion, Nomad’s Choir, Brownstone Poets, Hydrogen JukeBox, Saturn Series, and Phoenix among other venues. His first book, Close to the Tree, was published by the New York-based Three Rooms Press in 2012.
Robert currently worked as a Literature Professor at the City College of New York. He is a Cave Canem Fellow (2019-2021) and has received residencies from the Norman Mailer Foundation (2017) and the DISQUIET International Literary Program (2018). In 2018 he completed his MFA at City College.
Robert has been published in over thirty literary magazines and in several notable anthologies. Recent publication credits include Expound, Promethean, Turtle Island Quarterly, Killer Whale, and Suisun Valley Review, and the Bronx Memoir Project: Vol. 2 published by the Bronx Council of the Arts.
Robert lives in Brooklyn and continues to be active in the New York poetry scene. Flight is his second poetry collection.
Jovelyn Richards (image above) is a writer/director/ comedian, international improvisational performance artist living in Honolulu, HI. Jovelyn’s work has premiered (selected venues) The Marsh, SF, Afro Solo, SF, La Peña Cultural Center, Berkeley CA, Los Angeles Women’s Theater Festival, the National Black Theatre Festival, North Carolina, Oakland Comedy and Central Eastern University, Budapest, HU.Jovelyn was honored to be artist in residence 2010-2019, La Pena Cultural Center in Berkeley, CA.Where Jovelyn directed and facilitated community members using their voice for social change including 9-1-1 What’s Your Emergency? An examination of the POC being harassed and traumatized by White’s to contain and control.
George Kilby Jr. was born in Alabama; and the sounds of the South have never left him. Roots-Rock or Americana fit well enough, but the music has a sound all its own. Along with great songwriting, Kilby’s unique approach to the blues often features unconventional instrumentation including horns and accordion. Added to that are influences from country music and Southern Rock. George’s 20 years of playing with blues legend Pinetop Perkins always shows in his repertoire. A review of a recent CD cites “…pay particular attention to the lyrics…Kilby lays deeper-than-you-may-think wisdom on the table.” His collaborations with Jazz great Henry Butler, members “Jamgrass” giants, Railroad Earth and harmonica wizard Phil Wiggins add to the depth of his sound. George Kilby Jr. has taken his music from the dive bars of the east Village to major festivals of US and Europe – the Newport Jazz Fest, Tremblant Blues Fest, Copenhagen Blues Fest, and the National Folk Festival, just to name a few.
Heather Archibald has been writing poetry from her youth. She has taught English in various CUNY colleges in New York as well as in St. Kitts for more than twenty years. Her poetry collection “Home-Home” was published in 2016. She has been a Callaloo fellow in poetry (2016) and received the BRIO award for fiction in 2018. In addition to publications of her poems in The Caribbean Writer (UVI) (2015, 2016, 2017), Mom Egg Review (2016) and A River of Stories (2015, in which she represented St. Kitts and Nevis), her short story “Sea-Stones for Angeline: a Fairy Tale” was published in The Caribbean Writer (USVI) in 2020. Heather taught two poetry workshops online with Bronx Art & Fun Hub in 2020. She also has curated the monthly salons of “OPEN Expression in Harlem” from 2018 to 2020 at the Lenox Coffee and currently is the curator and steering committee member of “Creative Expressions NYC” (2020 to present), which hosts monthly (currently online) salons and open-mics free and open to the public.
