Busboys and Poets Books Presents GIRLS THAT NEVER DIE
Date and Time
Jul 17, 2022 6:00 pm
Location
450K
450 K St NW, Washington, District of Columbia, 20001
Jul 17, 2022 6:00 pm
450K
[what if i will not die]
[what will govern me then]
In Girls That Never Die, award-winning poet Safia Elhillo reinvents the epic to explore Muslim girlhood and shame, the dangers of being a woman, and the myriad violences enacted and imagined against women’s bodies. Drawing from her own life and family histories, as well as cultural myths and news stories about honor killings and genital mutilation, she interlaces the everyday traumas of growing up a girl under patriarchy with magical realist imaginings of rebellion, autonomy, and power.
Elhillo writes a new world: women escape their stonings by birds that carry the rocks away; slain girls grow into two, like the hydra of lore, sprouting too numerous to ever be eradicated; circles of women are deemed holy, protected. Ultimately, Girls That Never Die is about wrestling ourselves from the threats of violence that constrain our lives, and instead looking to freedom and questioning:
This event is free and open to all. Our program begins at 6:00 pm, and will be followed by an audience Q&A. Copies of all GIRLS THAT NEVER DIE will be available for purchase after the event, and there will be a signing. Full dinner service is available throughout the show. Please note that this event will not be livestreamed.
We ask that guests RSVP in order to receive direct updates about the event from Busboys and Poets Books. Proof of RSVP may be requested on arrival if capacity is reached.
Sudanese by way of D.C., Safia Elhillo is the author of The January Children and Home Is Not a Country and co-editor of the anthology Halal If You Hear Me. Winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, the Arab American Book Award, and the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, she is also the recipient of a Cave Canem Fellowship, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, and a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from The Poetry Foundation. Her work has appeared in POETRY magazine, The Atlantic, and The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-day series, among others.
Camonghne Felix is a poet, essayist, political strategist, and cultural worker. She is the author of Build Yourself a Boat, which was long-listed for the 2019 National Book Award in Poetry, a finalist for the PEN/Open Book Awards, and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Her poetry has appeared in Academy of American Poets, Harvard Review, LitHub, PEN America, Poetry Magazine, and elsewhere. Her essays have been featured in Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, Teen Vogue and other places. Formerly the Director of Surrogates & Strategic Communications at Elizabeth Warren for President, and now Head of Strategic Communications at Blue State and Blue State Campaigns, Camonghne is a seasoned political communications operative turned commentator. You can catch her talking about the news of the day on MSNBC or NBC Peacock. Camonghne is currently working on a literary nonfiction collection, Dyscalculia, and a collection of essays, Let the Poets Govern. Both are forthcoming from One World. She lives in Washington D.C.
