Join Perugia Press for a celebratory reading launching Lisbeth White’s American Sycamore. Featuring readings by Tamiko Beyer, Amber Flora Thomas, and Lisbeth White, and followed by a conversation with the poets. American Sycamore will be offered at a sale price during the event and accompanied by a bookplate signed by Lisbeth White.

This event is free to attend, but registration is required.

Poet bios:

Lisbeth White is a writer and ritualist currently living on unceded S’Klallam and Chimacum lands of the Coast Salish peoples. As a writer, she has received awards, fellowships, and residencies from VONA, Callaloo, Tin House, Split This Rock, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference, and Blue Mountain Center. As a healer and ritualist, she has been a facilitator of community-based healing justice work utilizing arts and Earth-based practices within social justice organizations nationwide. She is co-editor with Tamiko Beyer and Destiny Hemphill of the forthcoming Poetry as Spellcasting: Poems, essays, and prompts for manifesting liberation and reclaiming power, from North Atlantic Books. American Sycamore, winner of the 2022 Perugia Press Prize, is her first book.

Amber Flora Thomas is the author of three collections of poetry, including Eye of Water, which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, The Rabbits Could Sing, and most recently Red Channel in the Rupture. A recipient of the Dylan Thomas American Poet Prize, the Richard Peterson Prize, and the Ann Stanford Prize, her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Thomas is a Cave Canem fellow and faculty member. She regularly teaches at the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference. She has received fellowships from Yaddo, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and Sewanee Writers Conference. She earned an MFA at Washington University in St. Louis, MO. Currently, she is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina.

Tamiko Beyer is the author Last Days (Lambda Literary Award winner, Alice James Books), and We Come Elemental (Alice James Books), and a co-editor with Lisbeth White and Destiny Hemphill of the forthcoming Poetry as Spellcasting: Poems, essays, and prompts for manifesting liberation and reclaiming power, from North Atlantic Books. Her writing has been published widely, including by Denver Quarterly, Idaho Review, Black Warrior Review, and Georgia Review. She has received awards from PEN America, Lambda Literary, and the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund, and fellowships and residencies from Kundiman, Hedgebrook, and VONA, among others. She publishes Starlight and Strategy, a monthly newsletter for shaping change. She is a queer, multiracial (Japanese and white), cisgender woman and femme, living and writing in on Massachusett and Pawtucket land. A social justice communications writer and strategist, she spends her days writing truth to power.