Charis welcomes Sumita Chakraborty and Taylor Johnson for a celebration of their debut poetry collections, Arrow and Inheritance.

Sumita Chakraborty’s debut poetry collection, Arrow is a literary-philosophical exploration of the unknown and the unpredictability of life. These poems challenge gender and race-based violence, ecological devastation, grief, and mourning. Full of ecstatic and scholarly curiosity about humanity’s paradoxical tendencies, Arrow is a love letter to a flawed world.

Inheritance, Taylor Johnson’s debut poetry collection, is a black sensorium, a chapel of color and sound that speaks to spaciousness, surveillance, identity, desire, and transcendence. Influenced by everyday moments of Washington, DC living, the poems live outside of the outside and beyond the language of categorical difference, inviting anyone listening to listen a bit closer. Inheritance is about the self's struggle with definition and assumption, and each poem is a practice in feeling rapture, deeply observing the world, and then seeing otherwise.

This event is free and open to all people, especially to those who have no income or low income right now, but we encourage and appreciate a solidarity donation in support of the work of Charis Circle, our programming non-profit. Charis Circle's mission is to foster sustainable feminist communities, work for social justice, and encourage the expression of diverse and marginalized voices. https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/CharisCircle?code=chariscirclepage

We will be archiving this event and adding closed captioning as soon as possible after airing so that it will be accessible to deaf and HOH people. If you have other accessibility needs or if you are someone who has skills in making digital events more accessible please don't hesitate to reach out to info@chariscircle.org. We are actively learning the best practices for this technology and we welcome your feedback as we begin this new way of connecting across distances.

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SUMITACHAKRABORTY is a poet, essayist, and scholar. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry 2019, and elsewhere, and her essays and articles appear or are forthcoming in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Cultural Critique, Modernism/modernity, College Literature, and Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment, among others. Formerly, poetry editor of AGNI Magazine and art editor of At Length, she holds a BA from Wellesley College and a Ph.D. from Emory University.

TAYLOR JOHNSON is proud of being from Washington, DC. They've received fellowships and scholarships from CALLALOO, Cave Canem, Lambda Literary, VONA, Tin House, the Vermont Studio Center, Yaddo, the Conversation Literary Festival, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the BreadLoaf Environmental Writers' Conference, among others. Inheritance is their debut collection with Alice James Books. Taylor currently lives in southern Louisiana where they listen. Find them online at taylorjohnsonpoems.com.

A Celebration of Poetry! Sumita Chakraborty and Taylor Johnson in conversation