The Poetry of Laughter, Strength, and Survival

Amy Alvarez, Toni Bee, Linda Carney-Goodrich, and Trisha Zembruski will read from their work on the theme and lead a writing workshop with prompts for participants to write their own poems of laughter, strength, and survival. Optional open mic to follow.

This program is supported by the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture and the City of Boston.

The ability to laugh stands as a vital protection of sanity and a mighty form of resistance to inhumanity.- Maria Popova

BIOS OF FEATURED POETS

Amy M. Alvarez is the author of the American Book Award and CariCon Poetry Prize winning poetry collection Makeshift Altar (UPK, 2024) and the co-editor of Essential Voices: A COVID-19 Anthology (WVU Press, 2023). Born to Jamaican and Puerto Rican parents in New York, New York, her work focuses on race, ethnicity, gender, place, and social justice. Selected as one of 2022’s Best New Poets, her poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, Poetry Foundation, and elsewhere. She has been awarded fellowships from CantoMundo, Voices of Our Nations (VONA), Macondo, the Virginia Creative Arts Center, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, and the Furious Flower Poetry Center. In 2022, she was inducted as an Affrilachian Poet. She has taught at high schools in the Bronx, New York, and Roxbury, Massachusetts, and at West Virginia University. She currently teaches writing and literature at Boston College.

Poet and educator Toni Bee has been a featured poet at The Cantab (Boston Poetry Slam), Lizard Lounge, Grolier Poetry Book Shop, The New England Poetry Club, The Boston National Poetry Month Festival, and elsewhere. Her poetry has appeared in Oddball Magazine, Stone’s Throw, Boog City, as well as Best Indie Lit New England, Vol. 2 (Black Key Press, 2015), and her self-published chapbook, 22 Again (2018).
“Reading and Teaching Phillis Wheatley Peters in Boston,” an article co-authored with Nicole Aljoe, was published in the journal Early American Literature. In 2011, she was elected Poet Populist of the City of Cambridge, the first woman in that position, and in 2016 was selected Cambridge’s inaugural Poetry Ambassador. She is currently host of the 2nd Thursday Poetry Reading Series at the Menino Arts Center in Hyde Park and she is founder of Poets in The Garden, where an array of poets and artists read at The Longfellow House and other green public spaces in Cambridge and Boston.She has been a teaching artist and storyteller at The Wang Theatre; a journalist and board member for Cambridge Community Television; and a certified Community Health Worker. Toni is a founder of Black Lives Matter in Cambridge (circa 2015), and teaches workshops at Writers Without Margins, IWWG: International Women’s Writing Guild, and last year she was selected as a Teaching Fellow at the Grub Street Center for Creative Writing in Boston. Visit tonibee.org for her upcoming projects.

Linda Carney-Goodrich is a writer and teacher from Boston. Her book, Dot Girl (Nixes Mate, 2024) was a finalist for the New England Poetry Club’s Sheila Margaret Motton Prize. Her poems have been displayed at Boston City Hall and have appeared in Solstice Literary Magazine, Lily Poetry Review, The MacGuffin, Literary Mama, Muddy River, Anti-Heroin Chic, Amethyst Review, Gyroscope, Spoke Literary Journal, and more. Linda is a recent recipient of an Open Doors Residency at Croma Space, a writing residency at T.S. Eliot House, and an Artist Opportunity Grant through the Boston Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture. She is Poetry Coordinator for the Menino Arts Center and offers classes, tutoring, and educational consulting through her business, Home Scholars of Boston. Her one woman shows include: My Life in Barbie and The Secret Childhood Diary of a Welfare Mother.

Trisha Zembruski is a spoken word poet, who often performs at local venues. She is working on 3 visual poetry books—You Can’t Dance With The Accordion Player, Next, and Fry It Up With Eggs in the Morning. For over 30 years, she has performed Action Theater, an improvisational practice of sound, movement and language. Trisha also teaches and directs Theater for Kids, a unique program where students create their own play. She holds a BFA in painting and currently works as a graphic designer and preschool teacher. Trisha is a longtime resident of Roslindale. Email: tzembruski@gmailcom