Author Event! Therí Alyce Picken's "What Had Happened Was"

Join us on Saturday, April 17th as we host the scholar and poet, Therí Alyce Pickens, who will be reading from and discussing her new collection, What Had Happened Was, with poet, Justice Ameer. Signed copies will be available for purchase during the event!

About the book:

In her debut poetry collection, What Had Happened Was, Therí Alyce Pickens investigates the complex structures of Black storytelling. Addressing topics ranging from Black life, popular culture, and history to individual encounters with emotion, love, and chronic disability, Pickens crafts and questions the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and who we want to be. Throughout, Pickens mines the formal structures and the play of Black English within the lives and afterlives of Harriet Tubman, Mary J. Blige, Lil' Kim, Breonna Taylor, and figments of our collective imagination. Her singular poetic voice effortlessly flows between what she knows and what she’s heard and between everyday Black conversation and her work in cultural criticism and disability studies. Traveling at the speed of thought, Pickens explores a praxis of storytelling governed by the places where truths and fables kiss.

About the author:

Therí Alyce Pickens is the author of Black Madness :: Mad Blackness (2019) and New Body Politics (2014). She is also the editor of three collections: two on Blackness and disability, and one entitled Arab American Aesthetics (2018). What Had Happened Was is her debut poetry collection.

About the moderator:

Justice Ameer is a poet and facilitator in Providence, RI. Xe is a co-founding member of blackearth collective + lab. Xe is a Pink Door Fellow and Faculty member, and an Artist-in-Residence at Williams College in Spring 2020. Ameer co-created the theatrical production ANTHEM with Chrysanthemum at American Repertory Theater’s OBERON. Beyond poetry, xe serves as Political Education Coordinator for SISTA Fire RI organizing women and nonbinary folks of color for political, social, and economic transformation. Xyr work can be found in Split This Rock, the Academy of American Poets, POETRY magazine, The Nation, and various anthologies and journals.

Host or Publisher Symposium Books Staff