$12 in advance / $15 at the door

7pm doors / 7:30pm showtime

All ages

Desireé Dallagiacomo

Desireé Dallagiacomo is a poet, performer, and educator from rural California. She is the program director & lead teaching artist at Forward Arts, a youth spoken word and social justice writing non-profit in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and she has been a finalist at every major national poetry slam in the United States. Her poems have been featured widely in such places as Bustle Magazine, The Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, Everyday Feminism, and the New Orleans Fringe Festival. A collection of her work has been adapted for the Vagina Monologues at Tulane University. She has taught & performed extensively across the USA, Canada, & Australia--being a guest speaker, teacher, and performer at more than 70 universities worldwide. Videos of her performances have over 6 million views on YouTube, and she is the co-host of a Southern Poetry podcast, Drawl. Desireé believes deeply in community education, and in 2016 she founded an annual writing retreat in rural New Mexico for young writers. Her first full-length collection of poetry is forthcoming from Button Poetry, Spring 2019.

SEE MORE PERSPECTIVE:

SEE MORE PERSPECTIVE is an MC, Producer, Spoken Word Poet, and Social Justice Educator. His work explores mythology, science fiction, spirituality, and the paranormal. Find SEE MORE in a cypher or a seance, pushing conversations about social justice, singing for strangers in a living room, or sharing culture, tradition, and craft in a classroom.

Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay:

Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay is a Lao American writer. She was born in a refugee camp in Nongkhai, Thailand and immigrated to Minnesota in 1984. Because of her unique background, her work is focused on creating tools and spaces for the amplification of refugee voices through poetry, theater, and experimental cultural production.

Her plays have been presented by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, Theater Mu, Consortium of Asian American Theater Artists, and Theater Unbound. She is a Playwright's Center and Theater Mu fellow in playwriting, a Loft Literary Center fellow in poetry, a Loft Literary Center fellow in children's and young adult literature, a Twin Cities Media Alliance fellow in public art, and an Aspen Ideas Bush Foundation scholar. 

Her poetry, essays, plays, and short stories can be found in the Asian American Literary Review, Massachusetts Review, Jungle Azn Magazine, Rubin Museums' Spiral Magazine, Journal for Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement, Saint Paul Almanac, as well as on coffee sleeves (Coffee House Press) and on metro transit (Saint Paul Almanac). 

She's received creative grants from the Jerome Foundation, Bush Foundation, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Forecast Public Art, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, and the MN State Arts Board, and elsewhere. 

She holds a Master in Liberal Studies degree and co-hosted a podcast on Minnesota Public Radio. Her picture book, When Everything Is Everything, is available now. Keep up with her @REFUGENIUS.