Creative Expressions: Open Mic & Salon celebrating National Poetry Month

Yasmine Lancaster is a multidisciplinary artist, an award winning filmmaker and a playwright, her play The Little Prince was selected in the first annual Kanini Fest in 2024 in Bentonville, Arkansas, a festival dedicated to highlighting the work of artist of color. The Little Prince was then selected again for to be apart of festival at the landmark Wow Cafe Theater also in 2024. Yasmine’s poems and essays have been published Bronx Times NewsPaper , Literary Review and Nia Magazine to name a few. She has had two chapbook that have sold out one was self published “Summer Breaths “ a collection of non traditional haikus that sold out within months and the second chapbook called Substitute Teacher’s Chronicles which was published with Harlequin Creatures sold out within weeks, with a portion of the proceeds supporting non for profits like Dred Scott Bird Sanctuary and GrassRoots Artist Movement.

In the summer 2023 Yasmine was accepted into the WildSeeds retreat as a fiction writer candidate . A proud member of Langston Parlor Poetry Salon , Women Writers in Bloom and La Finca. She is excited to debut her limited edition chapbook collection “You Wanna Tell Her “ alongside some new pieces and some old favorites. She wants you to know that she still loves Bamboo Earrings-but not sour gummy bears as much baby drool is the best and fireflies still catch her eyes but she would never catch them in a bottle.

David Mills bio -

Cum laude Yale grad David Mills holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and an MA from New York University, both in creative writing. He’s published three full-length poetry collections: The Sudden Country, The Dream Detective, and Boneyarn—winner of the North American Book Award and the only book of poems about slavery in Manhattan. He has published two chapbooks, After Mystic (Massachusetts slavery poems) and How the Earth Answers, which focuses on slavery in the Bronx. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Colorado Review, Crab Orchard Review, Jubilat, The Common, Brooklyn Rail, Rattapallax, Poetry Daily, Evergreen Review, and Fence—and he has been a Pushcart Prize finalist. He is currently a New York Public Library Cullman Center fellow. He has also received grants, awards, fellowships and residencies from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Breadloaf, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Schomburg Center, The American Antiquarian Society, the Lannan Foundation, the Bronx and Queens Councils on the Arts, Flushing Town Hall and the Brooklyn Non-Fiction Prize. He lived in Langston Hughes’ landmark Harlem home for three years (was a recipient of the Langston Hughes Society Award) and wrote the audio script for Macarthur-Genius-Award Winner Deborah Willis’ curated exhibition: Reflections in Black:100 Years of Black Photography, which showed at the Whitney Museum. The Juilliard School of Drama commissioned and produced a play by Mr. Mills. He has recorded his poetry on ESPN and RCA Records and has had his works displayed at the Venice Biennale. He has served as poet-in-residence of the Bronx County Historical Society.

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