A thoughtfully compiled poetry anthology accompanied by striking works of art, You Don’t Have to Be Everything is filled with diverse poets of varied identities grappling with questions of gender, sexuality, harassment, and pain while also celebrating beauty, risk, and making mistakes. Grouped by emotional experiences, such as loneliness, longing, attitude, rage, belonging, these 68 poems ring with diversity, self-discovery and self-acceptance.
Spanning the spectrum of identities You Don’t Have To Be Everything includes a range of voices from award winner Elizabeth Acevedo to Instagram heroes Kate Baer and Nikita Gill to giants of the genres Maya Angelou and Mary Oliver to National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman and many more. The collection allows readers to let go of shame and perfectionism, urging them to accept their own contradictions and embrace the complexity and fullness of who they are—and who they are becoming
This event is free and open to the public, but donations are greatly appreciated and they support Sundog Poetry Center's continued mission to encourage poetry for all Vermonters. A private Zoom link will be provide on the day of. Please register here.
Diana Whitney writes across genres in Vermont with a focus on feminism, motherhood, and sexuality. Her first book, Wanting It, became an indie bestseller and won the Rubery Book Award in poetry. For years she was the poetry critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, where she featured women authors and LGBTQ voices in her column. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Glamour, the Washington Post, the Kenyon Review, and many more. A feminist activist in her hometown and beyond, Diana advocates for survivors of sexual violence and fights for the rights of women and girls. Find out more at www.diana-whitney.com
Pre-order YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE EVERYTHING here.
Also reading will be two contributors to the anthology:
Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, M.J. Fievre moved to the United States in 2002. At nineteen years-old, she signed her first book contract with Hachette-Deschamps, in Haiti, for the publication of a Young Adult book titled La Statuette Maléfique. Since then, M.J. has authored nine books in French that are widely read in Europe and the French Antilles. In 2015, Beating Windward Press published her memoir, A Sky the Color of Chaos, about her childhood in Haiti during the brutal regime of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. M.J. is also the author of Happy, Okay? Poems about Anxiety, Depression, Hope, and Survival (Books & Books Press, 2019) and Badass Black Girl: Questions, Quotes, and Affirmations for Teens (Mango Publishing, 2020). She helps others write their way through trauma, build community and create social change. https://www.badassblackgirl.com
Joy Ladin is the Gottesman Chair in English at Yeshiva University and the first (and still only) openly transgender employee of an Orthodox Jewish institution. She has published nine books of poetry; a memoir of gender transition, National Jewish Book Award finalist Through the Door of Life; and Lambda Literary and Triangle Award finalist, The Soul of the Stranger. Her writing is available at joyladin.wordpress.com.