New Works: Mathing Memory

Diane Exavier (The Math of Saint Felix), Shanta Lee Gander (GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA), and Chet’la Sebree (Field Study) share poems from recent books on introspection, memory, and personal and familial histories. Moderated by Treasure Redmond.

This event is virtual. Click here to register.
Free and open to the public.

Diane Exavier is a writer, theatermaker, and educator who creates performances that invite audiences to participate in a theater that rejects passive reception. Dispatching from the Caribbean Diaspora, Diane works at the intersection of performance and poetry, concerning herself with what she recognizes as the 4L’s: love, loss, legacy, and land. Diane’s work has been presented at The New Group, BRIC Arts, Brooklyn Poets, Sibiu’s International Theater Festival, Dixon Place, and more. Her writing appears in The Atlas Review, The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind, and Staatstheater Hannover Magazine, amongst other publications. Diane is a 2021 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow Finalist. She lives and works in Brooklyn.

Description: Black woman with short, curly, black hair turns her head toward her left shoulder, facing the camera. She wears a tank top in front of a background.

Shanta Lee Gander’s poetry, prose, and photography has been featured in various publications. She is the 2020 recipient of the Arthur Williams Award for Meritorious Service to the Arts and 2020 and named as Diode Editions full-length book contest winner for her debut poetry compilation, GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA: Dreamin of Mama While Trying to Speak Woman in Woke Tongues which has received an honorable mention for the Sheila Margaret Motton prize and has been reviewed by the  Poetry Foundation (written by Ryo Yamaguchi), Seven Days (written by Skye Jackson), and Diana Whitney’s review in the Kenyon Review.  Shanta Lee gives lectures on the life of Lucy Terry Prince (c.1730 – 1821) – the first known African American poet in English Literature – as a member of the Vermont Humanities Council Speakers Bureau and is the 2020 gubernatorial appointee to their board of directors.

Shanta Lee’s latest photography exhibition, “Dark Goddess,” explores other aspects of the goddess and was on exhibition as a solo show at the Southern Vermont Arts Center earlier this fall. When she is not creating images or writing, she loves breaking into abounded places and horror films. To see more of Shanta Lee’s work, visit:  Shantaleegander.com.

Description: Portrait of a Black woman in a black and white photograph wearing a vintage black opera jacket, pearls around her neck, and a dress.

Chet’la Sebree is the author of Field Study, winner of the 2020 James Laughlin Award, and Mistress, winner of the 2018 New Issues Prize and nominee for an NAACP Image Award. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from American University and has been awarded fellowships from the Delaware Division of the Arts, Hedgebrook, MacDowell, the Stadler Center, the Vermont Studio Center, and Yaddo. Her poetry and prose have been published in journals and anthologies including Dr. Ibram X. Kendi and Dr. Keisha N. Blain’s Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019. Currently, she is the director of the Stadler Center for Poetry & Literary Arts and an assistant professor at Bucknell University.

Description: Black woman standing in front of water wearing a head wrap, a striped shirt, and glasses. 

A native of Mississippi, Dr. Treasure Shields Redmond is a St. Louis metro-based poet, performer, and educator. She has featured at the Nuyorican Poets Café, and published poetry in such notable anthologies as Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam, Breaking Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cane Canem’s First Decade and in journals that include Obsidian and The African American Review. Treasure has received a fellowship to the Fine Arts Works Center, and her poems, “around the time of medgar” and ”it’s halfway through the school year” were nominated for a 2011 and a 2021 Pushcart Prize. Her chapbook entitled chop: 30 kwansabas for fannie lou hamer was published by Argus House press in 2015. A Cave Canem fellow, Treasure has earned an MFA from the University of Memphis, and a PhD from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Treasure co-founded Fannie Lou Hamer House, a retreat space for Black artists, and is the founder of Feminine Pronoun Consultants, LLC, and Get The Acceptance Letter Academy. Treasure is presently the post doctoral fellow of literary executorship for the estate of Dr. Eugene B. Redmond and the late Henry Dumas.

Description: Dr. Treasure Redmond is a Black woman captured in a black and white photograph wearing glasses, a patterned head wrap, large hoop earrings, a dark cardigan, and a dark t-shirt.