Public Poetry Reading Series Featuring Catherine Lu / Chankrisna Tea / José Chapa Valle / Maha Ahmed

Join us IN-PERSON at the Central Library on June 1, from 2-4pm, for our monthly poetry reading and open mic! Our host Võ Đức Quang will introduce our featured poets: Catherine Lu / Chankrisna Tea / José Chapa Valle / Maha Ahmed. And of course, all attendees are welcome to join the open mic portion of the event to read one poem. After the reading, we will gather at Phoenicia.

Reading Location:
Houston Public Library
Central Library, Jesse H. Jones Building
500 McKinney St, Houston, TX 77002
1st Floor Events Space
(There is free parking under the Central Library. The entrance is located on Lamar St between Smith and Bagby St.)

Post-Reading Location:
Phoenicia Specialty Foods
1001 Austin St, Houston, TX 77010
(Free parking on-site)

Many thanks to the Houston Public Library for their ongoing partnership and support of this reading series.

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READER BIOS:

Catherine Lu is an arts writer, Emmy-nominated producer, radio/TV announcer, and creative. She works for Houston Public Media and has contributed to NPR. She is the founder of the independent arts blog, Houston Arts Journal. Her poetry has been published in Mom Egg Review, and she is the Inprint Mary Gibbs and Jesse H. Jones Fellow in the University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program, where she is pursuing her MFA.

José Chapa Valle is a US poet raised in Mexico, or vice versa. He authored Notes from the Last Age (FlowerSong Press, 2020) and two other books of poetry. His work in English has appeared in the Acentos Review, Eye to the Telescope, Star*Line and elsewhere. Some of his poetry in Spanish can be found in the digital archives of Luvina, Periódico de Poesía, Caelum, and Tierra Adentro. He lives in Katy, Texas, where he works as a leadership development facilitator, sans degree.

Maha Ahmed is an Egyptian-American poet and translator. She is currently an English & Creative Writing PhD candidate at the University of Houston specializing in Empire Studies. Her poetry and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Grist, The Adroit Journal, Rusted Radishes, The Recluse, and elsewhere. She is the poetry editor for Rusted Radishes and the winner of the 2023 Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Poetry. Her critical and creative work explores the Arab-American diaspora and the avant-garde.

Chankrisna Tea (she/they) is a non-binary Khmer artist from Houston, TX. She is invested in the art of sequences, poetry and comics, and her work can be found in Infrarrealista Review, Sybil, and more.