Virtual Reading: Praise for Via Negativa by July Westhale & MK Chavez

Submitted by the Event Organizer

oin us on Wednesday, October 28 at 6pm PDT when July Westhale joins us to read from and celebrate her new collection, Via Negativa, with MK Chavez
on Zoom!

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Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84501134024

Praise for Via Negativa

“In this stunning work, Westhale (Trailer Trash) interrogates the vocabulary used to speak about desire, the divine, and literature. Presented as a series of linked lyric pieces, the book spans a range of forms, including lyric fragments, single strophes, and prose poems, gracefully unified by an ongoing concern with the damage done by language, as well as its redemptive potential…With subtlety and skill, Westhale reminds the reader that sensory experience is irrevocably changed once it is relayed in language.” -Publishers Weekly, starred review

About Via Negativa

VIA NEGATIVA, often used to talk about the divine (a way of describing what something is by describing what it is not), is a book about the more difficult ways of talking about the ecstatic world. Half grappling with divinity and the many manifestations of gender/the self, and half an ars poetica, VIA NEGATIVA is a gorgeous holy dunking, a submersion into a rich field of lyricism and emotion that yearns to leave the reader clear-eyed and bright by interrogating the vocabulary used to speak about desire, the divine, and literature. Presented as a series of linked lyric pieces, the book spans a range of forms, including lyric fragments, single strophes, and prose poems, gracefully unified by an ongoing concern with the damage done by language, as well as its redemptive potential. With subtlety and skill, Westhale reminds the reader that sensory experience is irrevocably changed once it is relayed in language.

About July Westhale

July Westhale is an essayist, translator, and the award-winning author of five collections of poetry. Her most recent work can be found in McSweeney’s, The National Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, CALYX, and The Huffington Post, among others. When she’s not teaching, she works as a co-founding editor of PULP magazine.

About MK Chavez

Oakland-based writer MK Chavez is a champion for public health and social justice. She is the author of several chapbooks, including MOTHERMORPHOSIS (Nomadic Press, 2016). DEAR ANIMAL, is her first full-length collection of poetry. Chavez is co-founder and co-curator of the reading series Lyrics & Dirges, curator of the Fruitvale Friday readings at Nomadic Press, co-director of the Berkeley Poetry Festival, and recipient of a 2016 Alameda County Arts Leadership Award. She believes in literary confrontation and its capacity to challenge all forms of oppression.

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