Jay Rodriguez is a Grammy Nominated Saxophonist, Flautist, Clarinetist, Film Composer, Producer and Arranger. Jay Rodriguez is a visionary artist. His voice on all his instruments is one that has led him to be in demand as a leader and sideman with wildly diverse musicians.His important musical contributions have been a part of the NYC sonic tapestry in many genres as a composer, arranger and soloist for the past 30 years.

E.J. Antonio has received fellowships in Poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Hurston/Wright Foundation and the Cave Canem Foundation. She has appeared as a featured reader and performer at several venues in the NY tri-state area, including Why Not Jazz Room; Word Sunday Reading Series; Arts Westchester; The Stone; and the Hobart Festival of Women Writers, the 440 Gallery, and Langston Hughes House. Her work has been published in various journals, magazines and anthologies including: African Voices Literary Magazine; Black Renaissance Noire; The Mom Egg; Killens Review of Arts & Letters; Casa de Cinco. E.J. is the author of two chapbooks, Every Child Knows, Premier Poets Chapbook Series 2007 and Solstice, Red Glass Books, 2013; a cdRituals in the marrow: Recipe for a jam session was released in the fall of 2010, and is a founding member of the Jazz & Poetry Choir Collective, and is a founding Board member of One Breath Rising.

Cheryl Boyce-Taylor is a poet, author, and curator. Cheryl’s verse memoir, Mama Phife Represents, stands as a tribute to her late son, hip hop icon Malik “Phife Dawg” Taylor of A Tribe Called Quest. Alongside Mama Phife Represents, her four collections of poetry, Raw Air, Night When Moon Follows, Convincing the Body, and Arrival, a finalist for the 2018 Paterson Poetry Award, present a lifetime dedicated to the written word. Cheryl’s latest work, We Are Not Wearing Helmets is scheduled for publication in 2022 by Northwestern University Press. In her community, she has judged poetry entries to The New York Foundation for the Arts and The Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, and facilitated poetry workshops for Cave Canem, Poets & Writers, and The Caribbean Literary and Cultural Center.

Robert Anthony Gibbons has been published in over thirty literary magazines and in several notable anthologies. Recent publication credits includes; Killens Review, Tribes, Involuntary Magazine,Peregrine, Expound, Promethean, Turtle Island Quarterly, Killer Whale, and Suisun Valley Review, One Breath Rising ,Voices of Lefferts and the Bronx Memoir Project: Vol. 2 published by the Bronx Council of the Arts.

This event will begin at 4:30pm at the Soapbox Gallery located at 636 Dean St, Brooklyn, NY 11238. Register here!