The Broad Stage and Red Hen Press Continue Red Hen Press Poetry Hour with GOOD TROUBLE, NECESSARY TROUBLE

The Broad Stage and esteemed LA-based publisher Red Hen Press continues season two of the Red Hen Press Poetry Hour with an online episode, Good Trouble, Necessary Trouble, on Friday, October 16 at 6 p.m. PT in which host Sandra Tsing Loh leads a panel discussing the role of literature in racial justice, especially as our country reevaluates - as the ACLU said, "the deep-rooted systemic racism and inequities that disadvantaged communities of color [which] are still woven into the fabric of our institutions today - from education and housing to our criminal legal system."

James Baldwin famously wrote, "Not everything that is faced can be changed...but nothing can be changed until its faced."

Poets and writers appearing on the program include National Endowment for the Arts Award-winning author and artist Francis Payne Adler (taped), whose collaborative poetry-photography exhibitions that have been displayed nationally include A Matriot's Dream: Health Care for All and Dare I Call You Cousin, poems and visuals about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, done in collaboration with Jerusalem photographer Michal Fattal and Tel Aviv videographer Yossi Yacov. United Kingdom native Kazim Ali has lived transnationally in the United States, Canada, India, France, and the Middle East. His books encompass multiple genres, including the Ohioana Book Award-winning volumes of poetry Inquisition, Sky Ward and Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Practice.

Also on the program is New York Times bestselling author Steve Almond, author of Bad Stories "a literary investigation of what the hell just happened to our country, which he wrote to keep from going crazy." For four years, Steve hosted The New York Times Dear Sugars podcast with his pal Cheryl Strayed. Afaa Weaver is a celebrated writer whose most recent book is Spirit Boxing. His awards include a Guggenheim fellowship and the 2014 Kingsley Tufts.

The panel is completed with 2020 Iowa Poetry Prize winner and 2019 CantoMundo Fellow Felicia Zamora, whose books include Of Form & Gather, the 2016 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize winner, Instrument of Gaps, and & in Open, Marvel. A 2019 CantoMundo fellow, she won the 2015 Tomaž Šalamun Prize and was the 2017 Poet Laureate of Fort Collins, CO.

Kate Gale, Co-Founder and Managing Editor of Red Hen Press said, "For this program we have reached out to five poets who are plugged into the zeitgeist in multiple ways, and who are not just ethnically and culturally diverse, but are part of the wide variety of written and spoken word in our country." Gale continued, "Poetry is among the liveliest art forms - and their words literally dance about their subjects - illuminating the joy and the sadness of our extraordinary times, where we routinely are subject to headlines that would have been once a decade in previous eras."

This second season of virtual programming brings together performing artists and poets to explore themes central to works featured in The Broad Stage's 2020/21 Season. Red Hen Press Poetry Hour is part of The Broad Stage at Home, original monthly programming via the online portal that will broadcast through December.

At livestream time, the broadcast is found on The Broad Stage website at thebroadstage.org/athome
and on Facebook at facebook.com/thebroadstage. Each program is archived following the live stream for on-demand viewing.

Red Hen Press Poetry Hour has included readings from California Poet Laureate Dana Gioia, Richard Blanco, who was selected by President Obama as the fifth inaugural poet in U.S. history, former Los Angeles Poet Laureate Luis J. Rodriguez, Poet Laureate of Utah Paisley Rekdal, novelist Erika Jong, whose first and most famous novel Fear of Flying published in 1973 sold 37 million copies blowing conventional thinking about women, marriage and sexuality out of the water, Sholeh Wolpé, recipient of a 2014 PEN Heim, 2013 Midwest Book Award and 2010 Lois Roth Persian Translation prize, and 2019 NAACP Image Poetry Awards nominee Allison Joseph, two-time winner of the PEN Literary Award for Children's Literature.