Today I get to share some big big news ya’ll. It is with a belly full of joy, fire, and gratitude, that I’m stepping into the Executive Director role at
@lambdaliterary
—our beloved literary organization that has served LGBTQIA+ writers, their projects, …
I might note, love, that in the past 5 years there have been TWO black winners and NO women. Claudia (& so so many) slides into the invisible middle that Hull, Scott, & Smith outlined back in the 80s with “All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave”
The Pulitzer winners and finalists for poetry for the last few years have been resoundingly white which just feels like a willfully ignorant rejection of reality. For example: Claudia Rankine’s CITIZEN wasn’t even a *finalist* for the Pulitzer Prize. Embarrassing for the canon.
“Prof. Samiya Bashir [creative writing 2012–] has won a prestigious Rome Prize, awarded by the American Academy in Rome to honor artists and scholars who represent ‘the highest standard of excellence’“ Poet Wins Rome Prize
tl;dw Been in the hospital all week. Got Lyme disease in my magic covid-seaside-exile because 2020 got jokes. I have no laptop, no tablet (this was um unplanned lol) and so I’ve missed all the Zooms, owe all the email returns, please be patient with me. Love y’all. ❤️💕❤️
Woke up remembering...we are coping across the distance ... Roman Style. Here’s to us all finding and making more magic today...the ides of March might be upon us but like...we are still beautiful. 🌹
Awwww like ... remember when
#MattDamon
was just a mildly handsome, obviously small-dicked, standard issue
#Boston
racist before he tried to do too much — like speak?
I actually don't have to tell you a gotdamned thing about my history of sexual assault, nor need I perform even a moment of interiority, of pain, of wrestling, or of healing, and you know what? That shit still matters.
... awlawd y’all ...
I’m writing poems again ::
POEMS!!
Imagine.
I might even begin
to remember
how to write emails soon
but let’s not go get
all ahead of ourselves
yet.
*takes breath,
looks to sky*
Poems! Imagine.
Lambda Literary Enters a New Chapter
“Building the organization’s capacity to combat anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, Bashir said, she wants to position Lambda as the go-to organization for support and professional development for LGBTQ writers.”
via
@publisherswkly
"Most days America screams to anyone who’ll listen how it hates me so much it would rather kill us all than let me live. Home."
Letter From Exile: Finding Home in a Pandemic
@scryptkeeper
via
@lithub
Oooooooo good times are afoot! Excited to rock the 1s & 2s of poems this summer. Come on the ride with me this June — and with this amazing group of Poets all year!
Out here with
@Powell_DA
lookin at pitcher booty :: singing Journey because :: shouting for the
#Giants
:: living our best lives on a beautiful summer day
*squeal*
During the Age of Exploration, European goldsmiths created works of art celebrating both nature and artifice, making use of wondrous, seemingly magical substances suddenly available to them—such as ivory, ostrich eggs, and, here, a nautilus shell from the Indian Ocean.
#NowOnView
Y'all! Look at us! I'm SO PROUD of this stellar crew that is working together to pave
@LambdaLiterary
's next big roads! Look at us grow! Welcome to all the new staffers--including the new keeper of the Review,
@SuziG
!--and stay tuned for more about our growing team's work!
Well the news is out: NICOLE SEALEY AND I ARE GOING TO ROME!!!! ❤️🙌🏾❤️✨❤️ (and then the ceremony is downstairs from my sis
@torkwase
’s show at
@cooperunion
!! I am speechless…
REPEATEDLY confirmed by witnesses so go in head and lift your dropped jaw back up because (and I cannot stress this enough) SOME OF US HAVE BEEN TELLING YOU FOR YEARS AND YEARS THAT THIS IS WHAT THEY DO while pushing the narrative that we are destructive for no damned reason.
Who’s been offering the best congrats for my tenure promotion at
@Reed_College_
?? My students! Former/current/dream — loves! Thanks for making me love my job. ❤️🙌🏾✨
Forgive a bourgie-ass stunt but my black-ass is literally the ONLY person in first-class on this whole flight & if you could see these YT folks faces... it should be the cover of my next book. These faces are the ENTIRE reason I upgrade. It’s like white-tear-gelato. *chefskiss*
"For some of us, to speak at all, to speak even amongst ourselves, to speak even simply to affirm our beauty or laugh our own moments of joy, can be daring." —Samiya Bashir
HEH—I mean—Whatchu NOT finna do is miss the blackest
#goodgood
#PDX
got for
#AWP19
—drankin, dancin, sweatin, poemin, look-turnin, out-actin, whatchu need, prolly grab a plate or sumpn too. Come thru. It’s the only reasonable thing to do. 🤷🏾♀️
“What I wanted to know was: can a novel be a city?” says Roy. “Can you stop it being baby food, which can be easily consumed? So the reader also has to deal with complexities that they are being trained not to deal with.”
Y'all -- I am SO EXCITED to bring this life-changing experience back in person this year with
@LambdaLiterary
!!
"More broadly, I’d say queer literature is A Thing, it is a force and a community, and it is in flux.” - Lambda Retreat Fellow
@StephenOrBell
Racism is just so exhausting. Like. Folks. The whole “I haven’t had that experience so can’t talk” thing that “woke” white folks say like: how y’all never see what’s happening right in front of you...Never ending. I know I’m back in Portland so it’s extra but Still So Exhausting.
This Italian woman I sat with asked who my fave American writers are. Do I like, for example, Philip Roth? Have I read Franzen? At some point she said (perhaps because I’m not good at fixing my face) that she liked some women writers too. Couldn’t remember their names though.
The message of Best of Enemies isn’t that “love conquers all!” It’s that Black people should continue to jeopardize their own safety, peace and well-being by coddling and befriending violently racist white people for the mere chance to “change their hearts and minds.”
"If you expect to watch anything other than a Klansman redemption story, well, that’s on you."
#TheBestOfEnemies
, worst of white savior movies [REVIEW]
Today I stood up for myself and my art and I really need to do that more. I know it seems like that’s something I always do. And it should be. And today, at least, it was.
Y’all. Priscilla Benedetti is out here snatching light and seeing souls to make portraits that are out of this world and if you don’t know now you know and look how lucky I am.
Today I get to share some big big news ya’ll. It is with a belly full of joy, fire, and gratitude, that I’m stepping into the Executive Director role at
@lambdaliterary
—our beloved literary organization that has served LGBTQIA+ writers, their projects, …
SCHOOL’s! OUT! FOR...??? (i mean but will we ever school again who can say) — so I figure I should maybe return to the socials whatevers we’re calling here now again so cool yeah hi am I doing it right?
I miss my cat so here’s a picture of me and a random dog who played with me on the beach. Every bit of which experience my cat would, and I cannot stress this enough, hate. 🤙🏾
Have y'all seen
@lambdaliterary
's **NEW LAMBDA LITERARY REVIEW**?!? Redesigned, Rebuilt, and Reborn -- check it out! Editor
@SuziG
is publishing new reviews, interviews, and guest content on the regular! Sign up to stay up!
THIS MONTH IS ALL THE POEMTHINGS! I am so honored to have had the opportunity to dream with, and present to the world, twenty badass
#queer
,
#femme
,
#gnc
,
#enby
, and
#women
#poets
of color from all over the country this month. Don't miss a single one. You'll be glad!
@POETSorg
We are thrilled to announce that renowned poet, artist, writer, performer, educator, and advocate Samiya Bashir has joined as Lambda Literary’s Executive Director!
Just out here makin the BB magic with my sis
@carmengimenezzzz
!
@graywolfpress
is such a critically important space in writing, in publishing, in art discourse, that I am grateful to everyone there for their work, and for bringing in this BB to take the…
Forgive a bourgie-ass stunt but my black-ass is literally the ONLY person in first-class on this whole flight & if you could see these YT folks faces... it should be the cover of my next book. These faces are the ENTIRE reason I upgrade. It’s like white-tear-gelato. *chefskiss*
One second of News and I literally hate everything with whatever is left of my whole heart.
One second without News and I miss like 37 1/2 US-led genocides.
How to choose ... 🚬🚬🚬
On a train headed to Firenze and everyone is all masked up and drenched in antibacterial gel...Not me. Sigh. Here’s to not getting the plague 🙌🏾
What a very strange apocalypse this is. So sunny, despite the locusts. Who knew the end of the world would still have so many Mondays?
I can’t stop thinking about the time, late this afternoon, when I helped a very old lady up some stairs and it was the best feeling I’ve had all day...and also maybe for many days. The way she reached for my hand, and I gave it, and...it was everything beautiful & human. 🙌🏾✨🌹
y’all I tweet this because is it even real anymore?
Me: literally packed (again), dressed, approximately-faced, redlipped (despite mask I’m stubborn) about to put on my shoes—
PA: walks in & has me sit down talmbout “So a funny thing happened at the lab blahblah spinal fluid”😭
I'M GOING
#IGLive
!
Stuck @ home and wish somebody would read you a story? Well...you're in luck. 7:30pm EDT starting tonight! Toni Morrison's SONG OF SOLOMON! I'll be reading it to my two little cousins--and you!--for 30 minutes each night until we finish the book. Join us!
It’s been decades since I learned that “Ypsilanti” was not a native / Huron word, but Greek.
Decades.
I’m still shooketh.
My childhood never ceases to colonize me.
Also, I spent many many of my childhood years living on a street called COLONY WAY. Fight me. Cuz I’m still mad.
I entirely fixed a whole-ass appliance yesterday all by myself so I’m just sayin y’all bet not miss me stuntin’ all these pandemic skills post-lockdown — I’ll be the one driving the getaway rocket that I MacGiver-rigged myself so just jump on in...the music is bumpin.
Two Harvard studies converge on a conclusion that black women are judged more harshly for their mistakes.
A black woman can say something that’s 90% right and they will pick apart the error. A white man says something 60% correct and people will see the merit.
PANTS WITHOUT POCKETS BOTHER ME SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH*!!!!!!!!!
*also eugenicist white-supremacist plutocratic fascism. too:
AND POCKETS!
Today. Thanksgiving a Roma. With thanks to
@Afaa_Weaver
who planted this poem, “Thanks,” by WS Merwin, into my body. And with burning gratitude to
@iluvlight
for recording and sharing. I was supposed to read one of mine...but my body. I’m learning to listen to it.
@AmAcademyRome
Today’d be my grandfather’s 100th birthday. I miss him more than I can say. He’d be in a hospital making masks happen for Detroit healthcare workers right NOW & you’d never know who cuz he’d keep the light on THEM. I’m staying inside cuz I love all your grandparents too—and you.
“Lambda Literary has long been a small but mighty organization swinging far above its weight in the literary arts...We are proud to have made it through the worst of the past few years and come out stronger and more determined than ever.”
okay so i REMAIN so blown away by this beautiful mural
@intisarabioto
and crew created in
#Portland
, right down from my old cribbo, with poetry from me and beloved
#NikkyFinney
and images of people I love both in person and in my dreams. Oh PDX...you hold so much sweetness. and--
Congrats to
@scryptkeeper
, whose poem “HOW NOT TO STAY UNSHOT IN THE U.S.A.” was selected for the 2022 Best of the Net anthology! Bashir’s poem first appeared on our website and was later printed in An Ecotone Almanac. [1/2]
Ohai I suppose I should finally announce that YA GURL was just awarded a NYSCA Grant to complete revisions on I HOPE THIS HELPS--the installation poem I began in Rome which hung for about 2 weeks before the whole exhibition was shuttered by COVID. EXCITED!
So basically i just drove from the tip of Cape Cod to Southern Virginia, smooth and slow (had a close cop-call last week in the backwoods of MO), mostly without stopping except late late last night in order to not-sleep.
Basically I just didn’t want to get shot.
I made it. ❤️