Featuring Safia Jama and Michael Ruby

Hosted by David Lawton

Plus open mic

21+

$3 suggested donation. Two drink min, alcoholic or non.

Safia Jama was born to a Somali father and an Irish-American mother in Queens, New York. A Harvard graduate and a Cave Canem fellow, she has poetry appearing in Ploughshares, Boston Review, BOMB, and RHINO. Safia is a Pushcart-nominated poet and her manuscript was a semi-finalist in the Pleiades Press Editors Prize for Poetry. She was the subject of a “Shades of U.S.” documentary about her life and work (CUNY TV). Safia teaches in the English Department at Baruch College.

Michael Ruby is the author of a number poetry books, including Compulsive Words (BlazeVOX, 2010), American Songbook (Ugly Duckling, 2013) and, most recently, The Mouth of the Bay (BlazeVOX, 2019), as well as a trilogy in prose and poetry, Memories, Dreams and Inner Voices (Station Hill, 2012). He also co-edited Bernadette Mayer’s collected early books, Eating the Colors of a Lineup of Words (Station Hill, 2015). He lives in Brooklyn and works as an editor of articles on U.S. politics at The Wall Street Journal.