Yalie Saweda Kamara is the author of Besaydoo, winner of the 2023 Jake Adam York Prize. She is a Sierra Leonean American writer, educator, and researcher from Oakland, California and the 2022–2023 Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate.
ANNOUNCING THE WINNER OF THE 2022–23 JAKE ADAM YORK PRIZE!
Copper Nickel and Milkweed Editions are thrilled to announce that judge Amaud Jamaul Johnson, has chosen Yalie Saweda Kamara’s book Besaydoo as the winner of the 2022–23 Jake Adam York Prize. Besaydoo will be published by Milkweed Editions in Winter 2024, and Kamara will receive $2,000.
Yalie Saweda Kamara is a Sierra Leonean American writer, educator, and researcher from Oakland, California, and the 2022–23 Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate (two-year term). She has received fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, the National Book Critics Circle, and Callaloo. Kamara’s poetry…
A gathering and celebration of Milkweed authors and readers featuring an exclusive reading from 5 of our recently published poets (Ama Codjoe, Kathy Fagan, K. Iver, Sara Eliza Johnson, Elizabeth Metzger, and Claire Wahmanholm) accessible through a QR code at the event. The poets have also contributed a “book artifact”—an object, playlist, piece of memorabilia that is connected to their collection—available to win through a raffle along with other Milkweed swag during the event. Bring a friend and help us toast our amazing authors and readers. We can’t wait to celebrate with you!
Join Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe at the Northern Arizona Book Festival in kinłání (aka flagstaff, AZ).
Join K. Iver at the Louisville Conference for engaging conversation about their new book Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco, and the panel “’You don’t seem too haunted, but you haunted’: Patterning and Neuroqueer Memory”.
“I was in the car the first time music seemed strange: the instruments less distinct, the vocals less crisp.”
A devastating memoir that sheds urgent, bracingly honest light on both the taboos surrounding disability and the limits of medical science, Losing Music is refreshingly vulnerable and singularly illuminating–a story that will make readers see their own lives anew.
Join Debra Magpie Earling, author of Perma Red and the long-awaited The Lost Journals of Sacajewea and Tommy Orange, author of NY Times bestseller, There There as the two read from their work, discuss Native fictions, and consider what stories need to be heard and told.
Moderated by April Ignacio of the Rez Book Club. A partnership between the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing and Changing Hands Bookstore.
Join Erin Sharkey, Cultural Producer, Writer, Arts and Abolition Organizer, and Cultural Worker based in Minneapolis on Dakota land.
Erin Sharkey will discuss, A Darker Wilderness, a collection of personal and lyric essays in conversation with archival objects of Black history. Each of these essays explores stories spanning hundreds of years and thousands of miles, traveling from roots to space–finding rich Blackness everywhere.
In honor of Poetry Month, join to celebrate the publication of Bluest Nude by poet Ama Codjoe in conversation with poet and professor Yona Harvey. Ama Codjoe’s highly anticipated debut collection brings generous light to the inner dialogues of women as they bathe, create art, make and lose love. Each poem rises with the urgency of a fully awakened sensual life. Audience Q&A and book sales to follow.
U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón will read from her new collection The Hurting Kind, followed by an on-stage conversation with Roberto Tejada, author of the poetry collection Why the Assembly Disbanded. The evening will conclude with a book sale and signing.
