The group SACO & As It Is is a unique ensemble with vocal/mbira/piano, percussion, spoken word, and a choir. However, because the choir members do not all having musical backgrounds, they boldly bring challenging improvisational approaches to the music. Their free and easy performing style is gradually drawing attention from the musical community.

Master trumpeter , Ahmed Abdullah, recounts his 2 decades of touring with the great jazz musician Sun Ra in his new memoir, A Strange Celestial Road: My Time in the Sun Ra Arkestra.  

For this zoom event, Abby and Lee will share the first episode of a proposed internet series, Legacies, which focuses on the musician/composer Thomas Chapin who passed away at the age of 40 in 1998 and the efforts of his widow, Terri Castillo Chapin, to preserve, protect and secure his archival legacy at Duke University’s Library of Special Collections for future generations to discover him. During the course of making this film, Terri, herself, passed away. This episode is dedicated to them both.

Glenis Redmond will read from her latest book, Praise Songs for Dave the Potter, Art by Jonathan Green, and Poetry by Glenis Redmond (University of Georgia Press). She is the First Poet Laureate of Greenville, South Carolina. She is a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist, and a Cave Canem alumni.

Kim Coleman Foote will be reading from her debut novel, Coleman Hill, which is the exhilarating story of two American families whose fates become intertwined in the wake of the Great Migration. Braiding fact and fiction, it is a remarkable, character-rich tour de force exploring the ties that bind three generations.

Ras Moshe Burnett is a Brooklyn born saxophonist/composer/educator, hailing from a musical family. He began performing with his own ensembles in 1987. Patricia Spears Jones is the NY State Poet, and is the recipient of the Jackson Poetry Prize, She will be reading from her latest collection, The Beloved Community,

This is going to be great! We will hear from our own Board member, Jacqueline Johnson, as well as fellow contributors to From The Belly: Poets Respond to Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons,, Kaaren Aleiner, Nancy White. It’s guaranteed to be fun!

We are thrilled to present the Makanda Project, a 13-piece ensemble that has become an important part of the Boston jazz scene. Join us!

We can’t wait to hear our former Board member and long-time friend, JoAnne McFarland, read from her new book, Pullman. JoAnne is a multidisciplinary artist and writer, and the Artistic Director of Artpoetica Project Space in Gowanus, Brooklyn which exhibits works that focus on the intersection of language and visual representation.

We will continue our series with the improvising string and rhythm collective, We Free Strings, which includes Charles Burnham, Melanie Dyer, Ken Filiano, Gwen Laster, Alex Waterman, Michael Wimberly.

Randall Horton is a writer, poet, artist, and professor of English at the University of New Haven.  He is the only person in the United States with seven felony convictions and academic tenure.

Join One Breath Rising for an early celebration of Craig Harris’ 70th birthday with original works performed by his trio. Craig Harris is a trombonist, prolific composer, sonic shaman, and one of creative music’s most progressive thought-leaders. From touring with Sun Ra to co-composing the film score for Judas and the Black Messiah, Craig uses his musical voice to comment on social injustice and humanity.

Tony Medina is a multi-genre author/editor of 24 award-winning books for adults and young people, the most recent of which are Che Che Colé (fiction); Death, With Occasional Smiling (poetry); Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Boy (children’s); I Am Alfonso Jones (graphic novel); Resisting Arrest: Poems to Stretch the Sky (anthology).

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.

Susana H. Case, Ph. D., is the author of eight books of poetry. The Damage Done, from Broadstone Books (2022) is her newest and won a Pinnacle Award for Best Poetry Book. Dead Shark on the N Train, from Broadstone Books (2020), also won a Pinnacle Book Award for Best Poetry Book, as well as a NYC Big Book Awards Distinguished Favorite, and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award.

Glenis Redmond is the First Poet Laureate of Greenville, South Carolina. She is a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist, and a Cave Canem alumni. She has authored six books of poetry, for which she has won many awards.

Jai Chakrabarti is the author of the novel A Play for the End of the World (Knopf), which won the National Jewish Book Award for debut fiction, was the Association of Jewish Libraries Honor Book, was short-listed for the Tagore Prize, and was long-listed for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He is also the author of the story collection A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness( Knopf, Feb 2023).

Myronn Hardy is the author of five books of poems, most recently, Radioactive Starlings. Join us on Zoom! See you there!

Join us on Sunday, November 13, 2022 at 4:40 pm on Zoom to celebrate the arrival of At the Crossroads – the One Breath Rising Anthology of Poetry and Prose. Click here to register.

Come celebrate the Brooklyn debut of the extraordinary Makanda Project, a 13-piece ensemble that has become an important part of the Boston jazz scene. Led by pianist, bandleader and arranger, John Kordalewski, the Makanda Project explores and celebrates the richness of the unrecorded music of multi-instrumentalist, composer and educator Dr. Makanda Ken McIntyre.

Jacqueline Johnson is a multi-disciplined artist creating in both poetry, fiction writing and fiber arts. She is the author of A Woman's Season, a finalist on Main Street Rag and A Gathering of Mother Tongues, published by White Pine Press and is the winner of the Third Annual White Pine Press Poetry Award.

We are thrilled to host a live and live-streamed CELEBRATION of our anthology - At the Crossroads: the One Breath Rising Anthology of Poetry and Prose featuring the Jay Rodriguez Trio, and poets Cheryl Boyce TaylorRobert Gibbons, Angela Lockhart-Aronoff and Mervyn Taylor. Don’t miss it!

Caits Meissner is a poly-creative writer, artist and cultural worker based in New York City. She is the editor of the forthcoming book The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting A Writer’s Life in Prison (Haymarket Books, January 2022), and author of the illustrated hybrid poetry book Let It Die Hungry (The Operating System, 2016).

Ahmed Abdullah – trumpet and vocals
Francisco Mora Catlett – multi-percussion
Monique Ngozi Nri – poetry and vocals
Roman Diaz – African percussion
DD Jackson – piano
Don Chapman – tenor saxophone
Radu ben Judah – bass

JOHN MURILLO is the author of the poetry collections Up Jump the Boogie, finalist for both the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Pen Open Book Award, and Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry, winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the Poetry Society of Virginia’s North American Book Award, and finalist for the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry and the NAACP Image Award.

Christina Olivares is the author of Our America is Botanic (Get Fresh Books, forthcoming 2022), No Map of the Earth Includes Stars, winner of the 2014 Marsh Hawk Press Book Prize, and the chaplet, Interrupt (Belladonna* Collaborative, 2015).

WILLIE PERDOMO is the author of Smoking Lovely: The Remix (Haymarket Books, 2021), The Crazy Bunch (Penguin Random House, 2019), The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon (Penguin Random House, 2014), and Where a Nickel Costs of Dime (Norton, 1996). Winner of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Cy Twombly Award for Poetry, the New York City Book Award in Poetry, and the PEN Open Book Award,

Former Kentucky Poet Laureate, Frank X Walker is a Professor in the department of English and the African American and Africana Studies Program at the University of Kentucky and the founding editor of Pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture. A Cave Canem Fellow and co-founder of the Affrilachian Poets, he is the author of eight collections of poetry including, Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers, winner of the 2014 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry; and Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York, winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award as well as two new collections, The Affrilachian Sonnets and About Flight.

LECONTE DILL was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles, California, the granddaughter of sojourners of the 2nd Wave of the Great Migration. She remains curious about sojourning, migrations, and landing and launching places and spaces. “Le Conte” literally means “The Fairy Tale,” and likewise, LeConté listens to, documents, dreams, and creates stories of reimagining.

MARIAHADESSA EKERE TALLIE is the author of the award-winning children’s book Layla’s Happiness(Enchanted Lion Books). Her work for adults includes Strut (Agape Editions), Dear Continuum: Letters to a Poet Crafting Liberation (Grand Concourse Press), and Karma’s Footsteps (Flipped Eye Publishing). Tallie is the subject of the short film “I Leave My Colors Everywhere.”