each other’s harvest: an afternoon of poetry, community, and address

For the last two years, Cave Canem has been leading Magnitude & Bond: A Field Study on Black Literary Arts Service Organizations. The study reveals key insights on the organizational needs, strategies, and models that enable Black literary organizations in the United States to thrive despite adverse socioeconomic conditions. Hosted by Yahdon Israel and featuring a reading from Lauren K. Alleyne, Lisa Willis, Co-Principal Investigator and Executive Director of Cave Canem, presents on the release of this historic study to the public, followed by a keynote address from Jermaine Fowler.

About

Yahdon Israel is a senior editor at Simon & Schuster and the founder of Literaryswag, a cultural movement that intersects literature and fashion to make books accessible. He brings an entrepreneurial spirit to these pursuits as the founder of a popular book club, host of a literary podcast, creative writing teacher, and event producer, as well as his work in support of several prestigious literary awards.

Lauren K. Alleyne serves as Executive Director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center and a Professor of English at James Madison University. She is the author of two collections, Honeyfish and Difficult Fruit; two chapbooks, Dawn in the Kaatskills and (Un)Becoming Gretel; and co-editor of Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry. Her award-winning work has been widely published in publications, journals, and anthologies internationally, including The Atlantic and The New York Times. Ms. Alleyne, who hails from the twin island Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, has been recognized with two US Artist Award nominations (2016, 2023), an NAACP Image Award nomination for Outstanding Poetry (2020), the Green Rose Prize from New Issues Press (2017), and was shortlisted for the BOCAS Prize for Caribbean Literature and the Library of Virginia Prize for Poetry (2020). In 2022, Alleyne was awarded the JMU Agency Star Award and an Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia.

Lisa Willis, Executive Director of Cave Canem, is a passionate artistic administrator and creative space maker with over 20 years of experience managing multi-disciplinary projects in the non-profit and commercial arts sectors. She has held various consulting and management roles in development, programming, and operations for New York Live Arts, home of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, Contemporaneous, Thresh, Heidi Latsky Dance, Brian Sanders’ JUNK, Kimmel Center Cultural Campus, the Mann, and JazzReach. In 2020 she co-founded The LynList, a curated listserv and grant writing support service for NYC area individual artists and small non-profit arts groups. As an advocate dedicated to articulating the conditions needed for creativity and cultural preservation to flourish, she is actively engaged in expanding the research needed to inform cultural and social progress. Her work in this area includes serving as co-Principal Investigator on the “Magnitude and Bond: A Field Study on Black Literary Arts Service Organizations.”

Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Jermaine Fowler is a storyteller and self-proclaimed intellectual adventurer who spent his youth seeking knowledge on the shelves of his local free public library. Between research and lecturing, he is the host of the top-rated history podcast, The Humanity Archive, which has been praised as a must-listen by Vanity Fair. Challenging dominant perspectives, Fowler goes outside the textbooks to find stories that are recognizably human. Connecting current issues with the heroic struggles of those who’ve come before us, he brings hidden history to light and makes it powerfully relevant.

Host or Publisher Cave Canem Foundation, Inc.