SAND 22 Video Features

Credits

Lena Blackmon (they/she) is a scientist and a poet. With writing featured in The Offing, Rookie, and the Visible Poetry Project, their work is also part of the anthology, Rookie on Love (Penguin Random House, 2018). They were named a 2018 VONA/Voices fellow and have previously performed with the Stanford Spoken Word Collective. 

Carol Claassen reads from her creative non-fiction piece “How to Kill Your Father” as part of the SAND 22 Virtual Launch Event “Re/construction”. Claassen‘s prose has been noted in The Best American Essays 2011, nominated for a Pushcart Prize, nominated for Best of the Net, awarded The Forge Flash Nonfiction Competition Prize, and is published or forthcoming in The Pinch, The Normal School, Fourth Genre, The Forge Literary Magazine, Pidgeonholes, and 3Elements Review. She is working on a memoir about her relationship with her father while riding out the pandemic in her mother’s basement in Easton, Pennsylvania.

R.M. Fradkin reads from her fiction piece “Giant Pacific” as part of the SAND 22 Virtual Launch Event “Re/construction”. Fradkin studied writing with Amy Hempel and Bret Johnston at Harvard and has had short fiction published in Cherry Tree, Theaker’s Quarterly, Cleaver Magazine, and Tincture Journal, among others. She is also Affiliate Editor of the Alaska Quarterly Review. She is beginning an MFA at the University of Idaho in the fall. For more of Fradkin’s work, visit https://www.rmfradkin.com/​.

Erin Honeycutt reads from her poem “Extracts from ‘The Contingency'” as part of the SAND 22 Virtual Launch Event “Re/construction”. Honeycutt writes poetry, exhibition reviews, and a variety of texts in collaboration with artists. She has read text at Kadett (Amsterdam, 2019), IÐNO Theater (Reykjavik, 2019), FotoTallinn (Tallinn, 2019), Dzialdov Gallery (Berlin, 2019), Reykjavik Arts Festival (2018), DA Space (Heraklion, 2018), Beyond Human Impulses (Athens, 2018), and Pólar Festival (Stöðvarfjörður, 2017). She has an MA in Art History from the University of Iceland and one in Religion from the University of Amsterdam, and now lives in Berlin. For more of Honeycutt’s work, visit http://erinhoneycutt.persona.co/​.

Viva Padilla reads her poem “xolo. to my lover who can no longer live under capitalism and the farce of democracy of the united states.” in the original Spanish, and her translation in English, as part of the SAND 22 Virtual Launch Event “Re/construction”. Padilla is a bilingual poet and writer from South Central Los Angeles. She’s the founding editor in chief of Dryland, an independent and grassroots print literary journal. Padilla’s work has been featured or is forthcoming in the L.A. Times, The Acentos Review, Cultural Weekly, wearemitú, and Every. Thing. Changes., an art exhibition by the L.A. Forum for Architecture and Urban Design. Padilla is a first-generation Chicana. She dedicates her work to the memory of her father and the sacrifice made by both of her parents. For more of Padilla’s work, visit vivapadilla.com/ .

Ayesha Raees shares her poem “Smothering a Mothering” in this beautiful visual form in celebration of the release of SAND 22. Raees identifies herself as a hybrid creating hybrid poetry through hybrid forms. She currently serves as an Assistant Poetry Editor at AAWW’s The Margins and has received fellowships from Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Brooklyn Poets, and Kundiman. From Lahore, Pakistan, Raees is a graduate of Bennington College, and currently lives in New York City. For more of Raee’s work, visit ayesharaees.com .