Cave Canem Retreat 2025: Faculty Reading at UPitt | Greensburg

Cave Canem supports the work of Black poets through a suite of core programs, including the Cave Canem Fellowship–which comes with a week-long residency of intensive poetry workshops and readings hosted at the University of Pittsburgh|Greensburg.

In tandem with this year’s retreat, Cave Canem is thrilled to host a public reading by our esteemed Faculty, featuring Remica Bingham-Risher, Frank X Walker, and Duriel E. Harris.

Join us June 9 at 7:30 PM ET to experience these world-class poets firsthand!

Access Notes:

• Virtual live-stream available
• ASL interpreter provided (in-person and live-stream)
• Closed captioning available for live-stream

About

Remica Bingham-Risher, a native of Phoenix, Arizona, is a Cave Canem fellow and Affrilachian Poet. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Writer’s Chronicle, Callaloo, and Essence. She is the author of Conversion (Lotus, 2006) winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award; What We Ask of Flesh (Etruscan, 2013), shortlisted for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and adapted into an immersive dance and installation work by INSPIRIT Dance Company; and Starlight & Error (Diode, 2017) winner of the Diode Editions Book Award and finalist for the Library of Virginia Book Award. She is an in-demand speaker at festivals, libraries, bookstores, colleges, and universities and has been a featured performer at the Kennedy Center, Dodge Poetry Festival, and numerous other venues. Her memoir, Soul Culture: Black Poets, Books and Questions That Grew Me Up, was published by Beacon Press (2022). Her newest book, Room Swept Home, is a work of poems, historical, and family photographs from Wesleyan University Press (2024). She is the Director of Quality Enhancement Plan Initiatives at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA, where she resides with her husband and children.

Multidisciplinary artist and educator, Frank X Walker, is the author of thirteen collections of poetry, including Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers, which was awarded the NAACP Image Award; Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York, winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award; and his latest, Load In Nine Times. Voted one of the most creative professors in the south, Walker coined the term “Affrilachia” and co-founded the Affrilachian Poets. He serves as a Professor of Creative Writing & African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky.

Performance artist, poet, and scholar Duriel E. Harris is the author of three critically acclaimed volumes of poetry: Drag (2003); Amnesiac: Poems (2010); and No Dictionary of a Living Tongue (Nightboat, 2017), finalist for the Audre Lorde Award. Multi-genre works include the one-woman theatrical performance Thingification, the video poem collaboration Speleology, the sound-image project Blood Labyrinth, and the speculative drama Code: A Sport. Appearances include performances at the Greenhouse Theater, the Chicago Jazz Festival, Babylon Cinema(Berlin), Votive (Auckland), Babel Theatre (Beirut), the University of Ghana, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Festival Internacional de Poesía de La Habana. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, BAX, Letters to the Future, Of Poetry and Protest, the &Now Awards, Imagined Theatres, PEN America, and Poets.org, among others. Harris has served as the University of Chicago Offen Poet, Visiting Professor at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and Teaching Artist at Lynden Sculpture Garden and the Naropa Summer Writing Program. Professor of English at Illinois State University, Harris is the creator of the O|Sessions pedagogical initiative and the #SyllabusforLiberation. Recognized with the 2023 AWP lifetime achievement George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature, Harris is the Editor of the award-winning publishing platform Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora.

Host or Publisher Cave Canem Foundation, Inc.