Join us at the 2022 AWP Conference & Bookfair March 23-26, 2022! We are excited to bring our year-long 25th Anniversary Celebration to Philidelphia, Pennsylvania.

If you plan to be at AWP, stop by Booth #748 and say hello!

With the exception of our off-site event, attendees must be registered at AWP.

We look forward to seeing you at our AWP events, below:

Off the Chain – A Cave Canem Fellows Reading
Wednesday, Mar 23, 2022 at 7:00PM (EST)
$20 Food and Drink Minimum
Proof of Vaccination and State ID Required for Entry.

Experience our annual Off-Site Fellows Reading at AWP 2022 in Philadelphia! This year’s event, “Off the Chain” features Cave Canem fellows Saida Agostini-Bostic, Richard Hamilton, Aaron Coleman, Teri Ellen Cross Davis, Hayes Davis, YC Harvey, Vida Cross, CM Burroughs, Kay Henderson, Steven Leyva, Nick Makoha, Alison Rollins, and Nzadi Keita who will share their work in four-minute, rapid-fire intervals. Open to the public.

#AWP22 Keynote Address: Toi Derriotte
Thursday, Mar 24, 2022 at 8:30PM (EST)
(Convention Center: Terrace Ballroom I & II)

Toi Derricotte, cofounder of Cave Canem, is the recipient of the 2020 Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America. Her sixth collection of poetry, “I”: New and Selected Poems, was published in 2019 and shortlisted for the 2019 National Book Award. Other books of poetry include The Undertaker’s Daughter, Tender, Captivity, Natural Birth, and The Empress of the Death House.

Her literary memoir, The Black Notebooks, won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Nonfiction and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her numerous literary awards include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She was awarded the 2012 Paterson Poetry Prize for Sustained Literary Achievement, a Distinguished Pioneering of the Arts Award from the United Black Artists, the 2012 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. With Cornelius Eady, Derricotte cofounded the Cave Canem Foundation in 1996. They are co-recipients of the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, the City of Literature Paul Engle Prize, and the MLA Phyllis Franklin Award. She is professor emerita from the University of Pittsburgh and a former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

This event will be in-person. ASL interpretation and live captioning will be provided.

Sponsored by Wilkes University Creative Writing.

Honoring the Endeavor!
Friday, March 25, 2022 at 12:10PM (EST)
(Virtual)

25 years ago, Toi Derricotte & Cornelius Eady came together in friendship and solidarity, with a determination to create “a home for Black poetry”, and Cave Canem was born. Since that time, Cave Canem has grown into a fellowship of more than 500 Fellows, an eminent roll of Elders, and a dedicated Faculty, who—in community—have worked to build a foundation for poets now and in the future. Join Derricotte, Eady, and guests for this celebratory reading, to honor the work of their minds and hearts.

Poetry & Disability Justice
Saturday, March 26 at 10:35AM (EST)
(Virtual)

“Adapted from Patty Berne’s ‘Disability Justice – A Working Draft’, a disability justice framework understands that: all bodies are unique and essential; all bodies have strengths and needs that must be met; we are powerful, not despite the complexities of our bodies, but because of them; and all bodies are confined by ability, race, gender, sexuality, class, nation-state, religion, and more, and we cannot separate them. Disability justice holds a vision born out of collective struggle, drawing upon legacies of cultural and spiritual resistance.” Cave Canem and Zoeglossia invite you to join Raymond Antrobus, Khadijah Queen, and L. Lamar Wilson in a discussion on how poets of colorwork within and without that framework, including readings from the poets. This panel is presented as part of the Associate Writers Program Conference on March 26, 2022, and is a virtual event.