Join us in celebrating the launch of Apogee Issue 06 with a reading featuring Derrick Austin, Chase Berggrun, Victoria Brown, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, Soyini Ayanna Forde, Leila Ortiz, and Nina Puro.   

Suggested donation of $5 to benefit the Bureau. No one turned away for lack of funds.

Derrick Austin is the author of Trouble the Water, selected by Mary Szybist for the 2015 A. Poulin, Jr. Prize (BOA Editions, Spring 2016). A Cave Canem fellow, he earned his MFA from the University of Michigan. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best American Poetry 2015, Image: A Journal of Arts and Religion, New England Review, Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, The Paris-American, Memorious, and other journals and anthologies. He is the Social Media Coordinator for The Offing.

Chase Berggrun is a genderqueer poet and the author of Discontent and Its Civilizations: Poems of Erasure, winner of the 2012 jubilat Chapbook Contest. Their work has been published or is forthcoming in inter|rupture, No Tokens, Cosmonauts Avenue, Cutbank, BOAAT, Beloit Poetry Journal, the anthology Time You Let Me In: 25 Under 25, and elsewhere. They are Poetry Editor at Washington Square Review, and an MFA candidate in Poetry at NYU.

Victoria Brown is the author of Minding Ben (Hyperion 2011), which was released in paperback as Grace in the City (2012). Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, New York Magazine,NBCnews.com, Sunday Salon, Moko Caribbean Arts and Letters, and in Perigee, Apogee Journal’s online blog. Her work is also forthcoming in Caribbean Quarterly.She teaches at the City University of New York and is currently at work on her second novel.

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan is a Japanese-Chinese-British-American writer with an MFA from University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a fellow at the Asian American Writers Workshop. Her work has been published in TriQuarterly, NPR’s Selected Shorts, The Tin House Open Bar, and The Indiana Review.

Soyini Ayanna Forde is an island grrl in Florida. She has poems and fiction included in MokoMagazine, SX Salon, The Caribbean Writer, Tongues of the Ocean, The Guidebook, St. Somewhere Journal and Black Renaissance Noire. Her poetry chapbook Taste of Hibiscus was published by Dancing Girl Press. She is very interested in West Indian identity and culture, diasporic connections, and what she can learn from the resilience of strong women.

Leila Ortiz is a poet and social worker in NYC public schools. Leila grew up in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and now resides in Bay Ridge. Her poems can be found in No, Dear Magazine, Referential Magazine, Stone Canoe, and The Ledge. She received her MFA in Poetry from the Queens College Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation.

Nina Puro’s work can be found in Guernica, H_ngm_n, the PEN Poetry Series, and other places. A member of the Belladonna* Collaborative; the author of two forthcoming chapbooks (Argos Books and dancing girl press); and the recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Syracuse University. Nina cries and works in Brooklyn.