Join our National Poetry Month celebration with poet-translators Samantha Cosentino & Zêdan Xelef who will share their work and process in working across languages, cultures, and geographical locations.
Readers
Originally from Buenos Aires, Samantha Cosentino returned to San Francisco where she was raised after years spent living on an island in the Pacific, the Mojave desert, and all over Germany. Home still eludes her—she suspects she writes in search of it. Samantha earned an MFA in Creative Writing and writes poetry, interviews, and reviews and translates from Spanish and German. She has also enjoyed the collaboration involved in writing for the stage. Samantha was recently recognized as a Browning Society Gita Specker Monologue Contest winner and a Poetry Center Audre Lorde Award finalist. Her latest poetry collection explores what is lost and what is gained in the immigrant experience, language acquisition, and translation, and recent poems have appeared in New American Writing. She lives along the California coast and works in education.
Zêdan Xelef is a multilingual poet, translator, archivist, and culture preservationist. They grew up in the Êzîdî community in Shingal mountains, on Iraq-Syria borders, where they herded four goats with three other cousins. Their work previously appeared, among others, in LA Review of Books, Translation Review, World Literature Today, Tripwire, Conjunctions, and Poetry.They are the writer of A Barcode Scanner (Kashkul Books 2020/Gato Negro Ediciones 2022) whose title poem was adapted into a poetry film of the same title, by Shook, that received the Award for the Best Film for Tolerance at the 2020 ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival in Berlin.
COVID-19 Safety
ARTogether Center abides by the COVID-19 safety regulations set by the city of Oakland. At this time, we are not requiring masks indoors, although masks and COVID-19 tests will be available on site. If you are experiencing COVID-19 symptoms, or test positive for COVID-19, please do not attend this event for the health and safety of others.
Accessibility
ARTogether Center is located on the ground level and there are two entrance doors accessible from the sidewalk. There are two accessible bathrooms on the ground level of the building, each with a single stall and an accessible stall. Please reach out to michelle@artogether.org with your needs.
