Join us for a virtual poetry reading and conversation with Durham-based poets Destiny Hemphill and Khalisa Rae!

We're excited to bring Hemphill and Rae together virtually, as they share pieces from their latest collections of poetry, discuss inspirations and process, and consider poetry’s role in the current political climate as a ritual and tool for revolution and healing.

Destiny Hemphill is a chronically ill ritual worker and poet living on the unceded territory of the Eno-Occaneechi band of the Saponi Nation (Durham, NC). A recipient of fellowships from Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program, Callaloo, Tin House, and Kenyon Review's Writers Workshop, she is the author of the poetry chapbook Oracle: a Cosmology (Honeysuckle Press, 2018) and the collection motherworld: a devotional for the alter-life (Action Books 2023). She is currently serving as the 2022-2023 Kenan Visiting Writer in Poetry at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

“motherworld transforms language into something map-like, topographical, somatic. A vast heredity speaks out in this beautiful collection of poetry—it is the multifarious self and all those that came before. A hymn of “we bury ourselves like cicadas upon the unearthing, the first instruction is to weep” continuous death and rebirth is here. It is prophesy in a voice that is arresting and fierce. ‘i am trying to remold my mouth to speak more bravely,’ Hemphill writes. She examines the past, but is not mired by it. Grief and love are emotions that are processed through the body, which is painful, but a means towards tangibility and revolution. This language-driven reality gives us something living to hold in our very mouths, and transform. These poems feel godly. And shared. This book shares a secret with the reader: ‘the earth will outlive this world.’ And I for one needed very much to hear it.” —Bianca Stone

Khalisa Rae is an award-winning author, activist, and storyteller. As a queer rights advocate and community builder, she seeks to uplift Black queer voices. She is the author of the poetry collection, Ghost in a Black Girl's Throat and the sold-out play production, Seven Deadly Sins of Being a Woman. An accomplished performer, journalist, and playwright, her writing has been featured in countless literary journals and magazines, including Pinch, PANK, Autumn House, Rhino, Jezebel, Blavity, and NBC-BLK. Her impactful work has received a Appalachian Arts and Entertainment Award, a Gwendolyn Brooks Prize, and multiple Pushcart nominations, among others. She is the founder of Think in Ink Literary Collective, the WOC Speak reading series, and a co-founder of the upcoming Griot and Grey Owl Black Southern Writers Conference. Khalisa Rae's YA novel in verse, Unlearning Eden is forthcoming.

“Our hauntings, our ghosts, our pain–the deepest of hues, heavy and harrowing–live as we do in the here and now, awaiting rest. Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat honors the dead as the living, speaking new life into all that weighs on black women–by freeing the voices of those who have been silenced, bringing peace to the restless who are powerless no more.” —Denise Nichole Andrews

This event will be recorded and closed captioning will be available through Zoom.