Indigena 019: BODIES IN MOTION - the poet in diaspora

Founded in 2019, Indigena Collective is excited to showcase the work of four poets in the community! This free event will take place at Artspace in downtown Raleigh. Free street parking is available on the weekends.

Featuring:

Boatemaa Adoawaa Han Mee Agyeman-Mensah is a GhanaianKoreanAmerican poet from Ham Lake, Minnesota. Her writing has appeared in Cellar Door, COUNTERCLOCK Journal, and the Carolina Quarterly, and has been recognized by the Adroit Journal. Boatemaa’s writing often explores what it means to be a child of immigrants. Specifically, the experience of having her Ghanaian and Korean identities work synergistically with her American subjectivity. Currently, she is an Ignite Rural fellow and serves as co-director of COUNTERCLOCK x PATCHWORK, an interdisciplinary poetry-film collaborative fellowship. Boatemaa studies English and Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Ash Chen is a Pushcart nominated writer, scholar, and artist from Charlotte, NC. She is currently a senior at UNC Chapel Hill writing her senior honors thesis in poetry. She is Chinese-American, being the first in her family to be born in the United States as well as the first to attend college, and intends to pursue health law and policy in graduate school.

Luna Hou is a senior at UNC-Chapel Hill working on an honors thesis in poetry. She was the Ages 18-19 National Category Winner of the 2023 One Teen Story contest, winner of the 2024 NC State Shorter Fiction Prize, and an alum of the Juniper Summer Writing Institute. She is a second-generation Chinese American daughter whose work inhabits the light-filled intersections between mythmaking, ghost hunting, and inheritance.

Paddy Qiu is currently pursuing an MPH degree at the Gillings School of Public Health, where their studies intersect with their passion for exploring the dynamics of various spaces. Their focus extends to uncovering the generational ripples of knowledge and fostering meaningful interpersonal connections. They are the author of “A.I. Fever,” a collection of poems published in Ghost City Press’s Summer Micro-Chapbook Series.
Their accolades include being named the 2023 Winner of The William Herbert Memorial Poetry Contest, recipient of The John F. Eberhardt Excellence in Writing Award, The C.L. Clark Writing Award for BIPOC Writers, and The Henry Matthew Weidner Essay Award. Paddy's works have been featured in publications such as 45th Parallel, Beaver Magazine, FOLIO, Barzakh Magazine, and Zoetic Press, among others.

Bao Anh Tran is a queer, Asian American & Vietnamese poet-translator matriculating at UNC-Chapel Hill. Her poetic obsessions include definitions, food, and the number three.

Host or Publisher Ina Cariño