Spring 2022
#ObsidianVoices
Celebrating artistic excellence in the African Diaspora online and beyond!
Join us for our first Spring 2022 #ObsidianVoices event:
- JAN 28 @ 6PM CT – Whirlwind, a celebration of the Furious Flower Poetry Prize winning and honorable mention poetry, selected by judge Kei Miller, published in Obsidian’s Radiance special issue 46.2 FEATURING Diamond Forde and Kweku Abimbola. Moderated by Lauren K. Alleyne.
- FEB 11 @ 6PM CT – Black Futures, a celebration of Obsidian’s 47.1 issue with a reading and conversation FEATURING Trace DePass, Aris Kian, MARS Marshall, Olufunke Ogundimu & Ronda Racha Penrice. Moderated by Sheree Renée Thomas and Nandi Comer.
Learn
About the Artists
#ObsidianVoices January 28, 2022
Kweku Abimbola is a post-graduate Zell Fellow at the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program. He is of Gambian, Ghanaian, and Sierra Leonean descent. He is a finalist for the 2021 Brunel International African Poetry Prize, the second-place winner of Furious Flower’s 2020 poetry contest, and has work published and forthcoming in Shade Literary Arts, 20.35 Africa, The Common, Obsidian, Sunu Journal, and elsewhere. Kweku is presently working on his first full-length poetry manuscript entitled “Saltwater Demands a Psalm,” where he investigates colonization, black mourning, black boyhood, gender politics, and the spiritual consequences of climate change in West Africa. His chapbook, Birth Elegies, is forthcoming in May 2022. You can find him on Twitter: @kwxkuu.
#ObsidianVoices January 28, 2022
Moderator
Lauren K. Alleyne is the award-winning author of two collections of poetry, Difficult Fruit (2014) and Honeyfish (2019), and is co-editor of Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry (2020). Alleyne was born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago, and currently lives in Harrisonburg, Virginia, where she is a professor of English at James Madison University, and the assistant director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center.
Get Your Copy Today
Blog
Latest News
Issue 47.2: Kara Lyn & the Southside Curse
KARA LYN & THE SOUTHSIDE CURSE Kiara Lowe (an excerpt)Common sense’ll tell ya that the North and South ain’t the same. Shoot, a compass will too. You see that big ole N at the top and that big ole S at the bottom when you open it. You know what else be at the top...
Issue 47.2: Ecumenical Service
ECUMENICAL SERVICE Ashley Mack-JacksonNine and ten: pinned in between cobwebbedcloset corner and the arms of ill-fitting church dressesthere is a first kiss struggling between cliché and sacredritual hands held out and palm up like surrenderlike benediction: who is...
Issue 47.2: Breathing in the Ruins
BREATHING IN THE RUINS Tony MedinaI am as isolated as Elizabeth Barrett BrowningNever to be born, neither to be crowning.To whom shall I bequeath these lungsThat bare the markings of stale airGone viral? I am a virtual prisoner To maladies unseen, a spine...