Poetry Event! Dani Janae's "Hound Triptych"

Join us on Friday, September 18th as we host Dani Janae in conversation with Kou T. Nyan to discuss her new poetry collection, Hound Triptych! Signed copies of the book will be available for purchase.

About the book:

"...Come carrion beetle,

funk-driven, burrowing through decay

toward sweeter stink. What could be said?

You survive a fall from heaven to sit at the root."

Hound Triptych, Dani Janae's debut collection of poetry, is a raw exploration of the intricacies of being an adoptee, the accompanying grief, and the destruction and rebuilding of the self through girlhood and into womanhood. The collection is a candid journey through the emotional landscape of abandonment and the human need for belonging; this is poetry that reaches into your chest and tells your heart, Listen. Feel. The poems mix gritty darkness with captivating imagery-the continuity of the ouroboros, cyclical and ruinous, the mouth devouring its own body; hair as a living entity, its knots growing into mammals that speak; a daughter's quiet, intrinsic love for her mother, "prized in the marrow, rich and pearlescent." Coupled with a wider scrutiny of the capitalization of adoption, Janae provides a perspective both personal and wide. Hound Triptych is an experience in the richness of the lyrical and an invitation to gaze into the unfettered chaos of the psyche and the heart and sit with them, unflinching.

About the author:

Dani Janae is the author of Hound Triptych (Sundress Publications, 2026). A poet and journalist from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, her work has been published by Longleaf Review, SWWIM, Palette Poetry, South Florida Poetry Journal, and others. She lives in South Carolina.

When she is not writing she enjoys having intimate conversations with the things that puzzle and delight her, admiring spiders, watching horror movies, and hunting for figs.

About the moderator:

Kou Tukala Nyan (she/they) writes about reflections, “what if” scenarios, and surrealism. Nyan’s first book, Jesus, Adulting, People in Poetry, was featured in Hey Rhody, and she received the Make Art Grant from RISCA for her forthcoming work Try and Make It Home. Intrigued by the paranormal, supernatural, and oddities present in your day-to-day, she is a futurist and a dreamer at night.

Nyan is a journalist whose articles are featured in Hey Rhody, The Bay, So Rhode Island, Providence Monthly, and Rhode Island Monthly. She reports and curates spaces/events and wonders in her spare time. Nyan resides in Rhode Island.

Nyan holds a Bachelor’s in journalism from the University of Rhode Island, with minors in Communications and African American Studies.