Spring Book Tour 2009
Please join me in celebrating the poetry that Martin Espada called "explosions of pain and transcendence, jagged epiphanies, surreal, haunting, erotic and anguished by turns". This is the work that Aracelis Girmay noted as "... the work of a poet who possesses the graceful sensuality of dusk & the unflinching eye of the butcher ... In Leon, you have an Orpheic poet who dives into the underworld of every thing--& comes back with the news."
Come ready for an intense literary experience, on the road, all the way from Germany, coming straight to you!
April 5
6pm
Webster's Bookstore
www.webstersbookstorecafe.com
128 S Allen St
State College, PA 16801
(814) 234-9712
April 6
8pm
hosted by Dasan Ahanu
Mansion 462
www.mansion462.com
462 W Franklin St
Chapel Hill, NC 27516
(919) 967-7913
April 7 (My birthday)
7pm
Market Street Bookstore
www.marketstreetbooks.com
610 Market Street
Chapel Hill, NC 27516
(919) 933-5111
reading and book signing with DeLana Dameron and Lenard D. Moore
April 8
7:30pm
Quail Ridge Bookstore
quailridgebooks.booksense.com
3522 Wade Ave
Raleigh, NC 27607
(919) 828-1588
reading and book signing with DeLana Dameron and Lenard D. Moore
April 9
9pm
Busboys and Poets
http://www.busboysandpoets.com/
Busboys @ 14th & V.
2021 14th St, DC
reading and book signing with DeLana Dameron
April 10
4pm
Green Line Cafe
4239 Baltimore Avenue
Philadelphia PA 19104
Informal poetry discussion and coffee
BIO
Raina J. León, Cave Canem graduate fellow (2006) and member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, has been published in The Sixers Review, The Externalist, Minglewood, The Cherry Blossom Review, Natural Bridge, African American Review, OCHO, Spindle Magazine, Black Arts Quarterly, Poem.Memoir.Story, Womb, Boxcar Poetry Review, Salt Hill Journal, Xavier Review, MiPoesias, Torch, Poetic Voices without Borders, Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade, Growing Up Girl: An Anthology of Voices from Marginalized Spaces, AntiMuse, Farmhouse Magazine, Furnace Review, Constellation Magazine and Tiger's Eye Journal among others. Her first collection of poetry, Canticle of Idols, was a finalist for both the Cave Canem First Book Poetry Prize (2005) and the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize (2006) and is now available through Wordtech Communications. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She headed the High School Literacy Project at the University of North Carolina and is currently teaching English and Spanish at an American high school in Germany. She is an alumna of Columbia University, Penn State and West Catholic High School. In addition to her work as a teacher, she is currently a doctoral candidate in education at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill.