Please join the Center for the Study of Women and Society & the Center for the Humanities for an end of semester poetry reading with Kendra Sullivan and Ashna Ali. Sullivan will read from her new book, Reps, while Ali will read from their book, The Relativity of Living Well.

Ashna Ali is a queer and disabled child of the Bangladeshi diaspora, raised in Italy and based in Brooklyn. They are the author of The Relativity of Living Well (Bone Bouquet, 2024) and the Substack PAIN BABY. Their poetry is published or forthcoming from Indiana Review, The Margins, Zoeglossia, Nat. Brut, and beyond. They hold a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from The Graduate Center, CUNY, and are in the process of earning their MFA in poetry from Randolph College. They serve as poetry editor for Epiphany Magazine, and teach in the English Department at Queens College, CUNY.

Kendra Sullivan is a public artist, an activist-scholar, and a poet. Sullivan is Director of the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center, where she leads the Andrew W. Mellon Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research and co-directs the NYC Climate Justice Hub. She is the publisher of Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative and the co-editorial director of Women’s Studies Quarterly. Kendra has produced public art addressing water access and equity issues in cities around the world and has published her writing on art, ecology, and engagement widely. She is the co-founder of the Sunview Luncheonette, a cooperative arts venue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn; and a member of Mare Liberum, an eco-art collective. Her books include Zero Point Dream Poems (Doublecross Press) and Reps (Ugly Duckling Presse). Taken together, her art, writing, research and advocacy advance public scholarship in graduate education from a justice-forward framework.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Humanities, the English department, the Comparative Literature department, Feminist Press, and Women's Studies Quarterly.