BFFs Grey Vild and Claudia Cortese, Jayson Smith and Aziza Barnes will read poems born of collaboration, conversation and BFF-ship. Cuuuute!

Aziza Barnes is a brown woman poet from Los Angeles currently living in New York. She is a senior at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, pursuing her BFA in theater, creative writing and Africana Studies. She was a member of NYU’s poetry slam teams in 2011 and 2012, winning first place in the nation. A member of the Dance Cartel, Aziza performs in venues around New York and is finishing a residency at the Ace Hotel. She is a co-founder of the Divine Fabrics Collective. Winner of the 2012 Button Poetry Prize and author of me Aunt Jemima and the nailgun.

Jayson Smith is a writer & choreographer hailing from the Bronx, NY. His work is published/forthcoming in various journals & anthologies, including Kinfolks Quarterly, boundary2: an international journal of literature and culture, and FreezeRay Press. Jayson facilitates a weekly writing workshop with the LouderARTS project in Manhattan, & is on staff for Union Station Magazine. Find him on Twitter to talk Beyoncé & poems & other, less important things.

Claudia Cortese’s chapbook, Blood Medals, which explores Midwest adolescence—a world of slap bracelets and sisterhood, date rape and PBR—is forthcoming from Thrush Poetry Press. Her poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2011, Blackbird, Crazyhorse, Kenyon Review Online, and Sixth Finch, among others, and her essays and book reviews have appeared in Mid-American Review and Devil’s Lake. Her first book of poetry has been a finalist for prizes from the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry and Black Lawrence Press. Cortese lives and teaches in New Jersey.

Grey Vild is a poet and writer who lives and works in Brooklyn. Vild’s work has appeared in THEM, Elderly, and Hue. He has a chapbook, entitled Go to Naples and Fuck Yourself, forthcoming from EOAGH. He is the happy recipient of the Queer Art Mentorship Fellowship 2014 with Stacy Szymaszek.