Today You Are Perfect - Downes, Okafor, Keane, Saint-Yves, Stokes

Today You Are Perfect - Downes, Okafor, Keane, Saint-Yves, Stokes

In our monthly reading series, "Today You Are Perfect," we bring poets and artists and listeners together to share their words. Afterward, everyone has the option to participate in a small question and answer session.

This month we celebrate poets of The Ending Hasn't Happened Yet, an anthology from the disability and neurodivergence communities, edited by Hannah Soyer, published by Sable Books, January 2022. Hannah Soyer will join the poets during the opening discussion and closing Q & A .

Closed captioning will be provided.

The Lineup: Kathleen Downes, Chisom Okafor, Haley Bell Keane, Michele Saint-Yves, Jessica Suzanne Stokes

Date & Time: Tuesday, May 31, 7:00-8:00 pm CT

Platform: Zoom Webinar. After registering below, the link will be automatically emailed to you.

Accessibility: If you would like ASL Interpretation for this reading, please email [email protected] by Saturday, May 28, 12 pm Central (10 am Pacific, 11 am Mountain, 1 pm Eastern).

Support Poets: You can learn more about and order a copy of The Ending Hasn't Happened Yet at Sable Books. Proceeds from sales of this anthology will go to Zoeglossia – A Community for POETS with Disabilities

Register Now

Kathleen Downes

Kathleen Downes

Kathleen Downes is a writer, social worker, and board-certified patient advocate born in New York City and raised in a small suburb of Long Island. A two-time graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she holds a bachelor’s degree in community health and a master’s degree in social work. Kathleen enjoys disability advocacy and has particular interest in studying long-term care policy related to the Medicaid and Medicare programs. Kathleen’s work is informed by her experiences living with cerebral palsy, Tarlov cyst disease, and vulvodynia. She currently resides in the same town where she grew up with her parents, sister, and dog.

Chisom Okafor

Chisom Okafor

Chisom Okafor is a Nigerian poet and clinical nutritionist. He has received nominations for the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, Gerald Kraak Prize, the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets and a Pushcart Prize, and has also received support for his work, from the Commonwealth Foundation. He presently splits his time between a diet clinic of a military hospital and its college of nursing where he teaches diet therapy and clinical nutrition.

Haley Bell Keane

Haley Bell Keane

Haley Bell Keane (she/they) recently graduated from the MFA program at Florida Atlantic University. They grew up in South Florida with a mango tree in the backyard. Find her @horripilatious on Instagram and Twitter.

Michele Saint-Yves 

Living with disability, I primarily write for performance – stage, screen and poetry – and on occasion directed and produced plays and short films. Since 2010, I’ve had short stories and poems published in journals and anthologies, with my first book of poetry titled LAMENT published by Friendly Street Poets Inc. in late 2021 (having won their Single Poets Competition). My novella THE PERMISSION SLIP was shortlisted for MsLexia Novella Fiction Prize 2019. In 2020 I graduated as a medico-neuroscientist winning UniSA Cancer Research Institute’s Cancer Biology Prize and was in the top three of Brain Injury SA’s Most Inspiring Individual Award 2020.

Jessica Suzanne Stokes

Jessica Suzanne Stokes is a disabled poet/performer/educator/scholar pursuing their PhD at Michigan State University. They analyze contemporary ecopoetics’ crip methods for climate survival and read into the experimental poetics of those who have historically been experimented upon. They are co-founder of the HIVES Research Workshop and Speaker Series. Their work has been published in Amodern and We Are Not Your Metaphor: A Disability Poetry Anthology. Jessica has a purple wheelchair and a lot of red hair.

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