BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//wp-events-plugin.com//7.4.2//EN TZID:America/Toronto X-WR-TIMEZONE:America/Toronto BEGIN:VEVENT UID:156@sds.utoronto.ca DTSTART;TZID=America/Toronto:20250307T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/Toronto:20250307T180000 DTSTAMP:20250227T183619Z URL:https://sds.utoronto.ca/events/queer-trans-poetics-9th-annual-queer-di rections-symposium/ SUMMARY:Queer & Trans Poetics: 9th Annual Queer Directions Symposium DESCRIPTION:Queer Directions is an annual symposium at The Bonham Centre fo r Sexual Diversity Studies addressing ideas and pressing issues in queer\, trans\, and sexuality studies\, politics\, and culture. This year’s sym posium has the theme “Trans and Queer Poetics\,” inspired by Billy Ray Belcourt’s beautiful talk at last year’s 2024 symposium\, Queer and T rans Reflections\, when he said “a beautiful sentence can be a reason to live” and then went on to share his own beautiful sentences with us fro m his project “The Cruising Utopia Sonnets.” We decided to follow Belc ourt’s prompt by dedicating this year’s event to queer and trans poeti cs and assembled a panel of poets and scholars to read their work and offe r reflections on its significance to them for queer\, trans\, black\, brow n\, and indigenous lifeworlds. We will be joined by Cameron Awkward-Rich\, Mejdulene Shomali\, Danez Smith\, and Jaya Jacobo.\n\nRegister on Eventbr ite at queertranspoetics.eventbrite.ca\n\n \;\n\nSpeaker Bios\n\nCamer on Awkward-Rich (he/him) is associate professor of Women\, Gender\, and S exuality Studies at UMass Amherst. He is the author of The Terrible We: T hinking with Trans Maladjustment (Duke University Press\, 2022)\, which w as a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Nonfiction and re ceived a Duke UP Scholars of Color First Book award\, and of two collectio ns of poetry\, Sympathetic Little Monster (Ricochet Editions\, 2016) and  Dispatch (Persea Books\, 2019)\, which received the press’s Lexi Rudn itsky Editor’s Choice Award. His creative writing has appeared in Poetr y\, American Poetry Review\, African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggl e &\; Song: A Library of America Anthology\, The Kenyon Review and els ewhere\, and has been supported by fellowships from Cave Canem\, The Water ing Hole\, and the Lannan Foundation.\n\nMejdulene Bernard Shomali (she/h er) is a queer Palestinian poet and associate professor in Women’s\, Gen der\, and Sexuality Studies at Williams College. She received an MA in Wom en’s Studies from the Ohio State University and a PhD in American Cultur e from the University of Michigan. Her research and creative writing occur at the intersection of transnational feminist thought\, queer of color cr itique\, and Arab and diasporic Arab cultural production. Mejdulene was a fellow in the Institute for Citizens and Scholars and the Cornell Society for the Humanities. She is the author of Between Banat: Queer Arab Critiq ue and Transnational Arab Archives (Duke University Press 2023) which won the 2024 Association for Middle East Women’s Studies book award honorab le mention. She is also the author of the poetry chapbook agriculture of grief: prayers for my father’s dementia (Finishing Line Press 2024). He r current research concerns affect and embodiment in Palestinian resistanc e.\n\nDanez Smith (they/them) is a poet\, writer\, and performer from St. Paul\, Minnesota. They are the author of the poetry collections [insert] Boy (2014)\, Don’t Call Us Dead (2017)\, Homie (2020)\, and Bluff  (2024).They have won the Forward Prize for Best Collection\, the Minneso ta Book Award in Poetry\, the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry\, the K ate Tufts Discovery Award\, and have been a finalist for the NAACP Image A ward in Poetry\, the National Book Critic Circle Award\, and the National Book Award. Their poetry and prose has been featured in Vanity Fair\, Th e New York Times\, The New Yorker\, GQ\, Best American Poetry\, and on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. They are a member of the Dark Noise Co llective and the recipient of multiple fellowships\, including the Nationa l Endowment for the Arts.\nJaya Jacobo (she/her) is Assistant Professor of Women and Development Studies at the University of the Philippines in Dil iman. She has worked alongside travesti and transsexual women artists\, ac ademics\, and community workers in Brazil\, as well as with trans\, queer\ , and nonbinary Filipina/x/o performers from the Philippines and Filipina diaspora abroad. Jacobo was a former Board Member of the Society of Trans Women of the Philippines (STRAP)\, a former President of the Film Desk of the Young Critics Circle (YCC) of the Philippines\, a Founding Co-Editor o f Queer Southeast Asia: A Transgressive Journal of Literary Art\, Co-Edit or of BKL: Bikol/Bakla\, Anthology of Bikolnon Gay Trans Queer Writing as well as the forthcoming Asog: Anthology of Filipina Transfeminine Writing . She just released Arasahas\, her debut volume of poetry in Filipino (Sa vage Mind)\, and the translation in English by Christian Jil Benitez Arasa has: Poems from the Tropics (PAWA &\; Paloma). ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://sds.utoronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/QD-20 25.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Toronto X-LIC-LOCATION:America/Toronto BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:20241103T010000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR