Boy Maybe: Poems W.J. Lofton with Rosa Duffy and Dartricia Rollins

Charis, Auburn Ave. Research Library on African American Culture and History, and For Keeps Books proudly celebrate W.J. Lofton's book launch for Boy Maybe: Poems with a community conversation with Rosa Duffy and Dartricia Rollins.

This event is free and open to the public, but registration is encouraged. This event takes place in the Artist and Writers Room at the Auburn Avenue Research Library, 101 Auburn Ave NE, Atlanta, GA 30303. Doors open at 6pm. Event begins promptly at 6:30pm. The event will be recorded but not live-streamed.

About Boy Maybe: Poems: 51 achingly eloquent poems from a young Cave Canem fellow: W. J. Lofton's verses explore Black queer Southern identity, grief, love, and intimacy while enduring and witnessing unfreedom in America
W. J. Lofton writes vivid, accessible poems that channel the energy, urgency, ambitions, joys, and sorrows of a young Black queer artist. They are about love and flirtation, sweet tea and hot sauce, God and family, life and death, police brutality and extrajudicial killings. His verses honor some of the young lives extinguished by these killings—Breonna Taylor, Kendrick Johnson, Ahmaud Arbery. He also pays tribute to some of the towering figures of Black culture who have come before him—Richard Pryor, Assata Shakur. His style is endlessly propulsive, informed by some of the Harlem Renaissance greats—Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks—but also transforming that rich tradition for the present day.

About the author:

W. J. Lofton, a Chicago-born poet and multimodal artist, is the author of A Garden for Black Boys Between the Stages of Soil and Stardust. His work explores the intersections of race, class, and gender while focusing on Black queer men’s attempts at intimacy and the tensions and wonders of boyhood. Lofton has received fellowships from Cave Canem and Emory University. A recipient of Ava DuVernay’s LEAP Grant, his work has appeared in TIME, wildness, Obsidian, and Scalawag. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia, where he co-curates Rebellion: A Writing Salon.

About the conversation partners:
Rosa Duffy is the owner and operator of For Keeps, a bookstore in Atlanta, Georgia, that specializes in Black classic and rare books.

Dartricia Rollins is Visiting Librarian for Oral History in the Rose Library at Emory University. She is the co-founder of Georgia Dusk: a southern liberation oral history, as well as an organizer with the Black Alliance for Peace and the Jericho Movement.

About the venue:

AARL has a free parking lot accessible via Courtland street. Please park and enter the library to get a guest pass for your dashboard before having a seat. Masks are encouraged but not required.

Host or Publisher Charis Books and More + Charis Circle