Book Launch: Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, Negative Money
Book Launch: Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, Negative Money
Join Professor Lillian-Yvonne Bertram as they discuss their newest publication, Negative Money (Soft Skull Press, September 2023), with Professor Kyle Dargan of American University.
The event will take place on September 6, 2023 in 2115 Tawes Hall at 12:00 p.m.
About Lillian-Yvonne Bertram:
Lillian-Yvonne Bertram is a creative writer, computational poet, artist, and educator who currently directs the MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Maryland. Their poetry collections include Travesty Generator (Noemi Press, 2019), winner of the 2018 Noemi Press Poetry Prize, finalist for the National Poetry Series, and longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award; How Narrow My Escapes (Diagram/New Michigan 2019), Personal Science (Tupelo Press, 2017); a slice from the cake made of air (Red Hen Press 2016); and But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise (Red Hen Press, 2012). Bertram holds a PhD in Literature & Creative Writing from the creative writing program at the University of Utah, among degrees from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Their poetry, prose, and essays have been published in various journals, and they are the recipient of numerous honors. Their fifth book, Negative Money, was published in June 2023.
About Kyle Dargan:
Kyle Dargan is the author of the poetry collection Anagnorisis (TriQuarterly/Northwestern UP, 2018), which was awarded the 2019 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and longlisted for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in poetry. His four previous collections, Honest Engine (2015), Logorrhea Dementia (2010), Bouquet of Hungers (2007) and The Listening (2003)—were all published by the University of Georgia Press. For his work, he has received the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and grants from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. His books have also been finalists for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the Eric Hoffer Awards Grand Prize. He is currently an associate professor of literature and assistant director of creative writing at American University, as well as the founder and editor of POST NO ILLS magazine. He also works as a managing editor for Janelle Monae's creative company, Wondaland. Originally from Newark, New Jersey, Dargan is a graduate of Saint Benedict's Prep, The University of Virginia, and Indiana University.
About Negative Money:
Negative Money follows a speaker continually coming of age while probing the binary thresholds of racial and gender identity, violence and safety, security and precarity, love and loneliness.
For readers of Claudia Rankine, Torrey Peters, Ocean Vuong, and Jericho Brown, National Book Award-nominated Lillian-Yvonne Bertrams’ poems are innovative, conceptually thoughtful work. Through experimentation and muscular lyricism, Bertram maintains a style that observes a speaker’s attempt to understand and exert multiple identities within the binary confines of race and gender.
Playing and gliding from acrostics to sonnets to maps, these compassionate, cerebral, and irreverent poems plainly recognize the larger and potentially escapable oppressive systems that dominate all of our lives by narrating the exhaustion that comes from living under constraining systems of relentless extraction, systems whose powers fracture all attempts at genuine love and intimacy.
Join Professor Lillian-Yvonne Bertram as they discuss their newest publication, Negative Money (Soft Skull Press, September 2023), with Professor Kyle Dargan of American University.
The event will take place on September 6, 2023 in 2115 Tawes Hall at 12:00 p.m.
About Lillian-Yvonne Bertram:
Lillian-Yvonne Bertram is a creative writer, computational poet, artist, and educator who currently directs the MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Maryland. Their poetry collections include Travesty Generator (Noemi Press, 2019), winner of the 2018 Noemi Press Poetry Prize, finalist for the National Poetry Series, and longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award; How Narrow My Escapes (Diagram/New Michigan 2019), Personal Science (Tupelo Press, 2017); a slice from the cake made of air (Red Hen Press 2016); and But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise (Red Hen Press, 2012). Bertram holds a PhD in Literature & Creative Writing from the creative writing program at the University of Utah, among degrees from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Their poetry, prose, and essays have been published in various journals, and they are the recipient of numerous honors. Their fifth book, Negative Money, was published in June 2023.
About Kyle Dargan:
Kyle Dargan is the author of the poetry collection Anagnorisis (TriQuarterly/Northwestern UP, 2018), which was awarded the 2019 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and longlisted for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in poetry. His four previous collections, Honest Engine (2015), Logorrhea Dementia (2010), Bouquet of Hungers (2007) and The Listening (2003)—were all published by the University of Georgia Press. For his work, he has received the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and grants from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. His books have also been finalists for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the Eric Hoffer Awards Grand Prize. He is currently an associate professor of literature and assistant director of creative writing at American University, as well as the founder and editor of POST NO ILLS magazine. He also works as a managing editor for Janelle Monae's creative company, Wondaland. Originally from Newark, New Jersey, Dargan is a graduate of Saint Benedict's Prep, The University of Virginia, and Indiana University.
About Negative Money:
Negative Money follows a speaker continually coming of age while probing the binary thresholds of racial and gender identity, violence and safety, security and precarity, love and loneliness.
For readers of Claudia Rankine, Torrey Peters, Ocean Vuong, and Jericho Brown, National Book Award-nominated Lillian-Yvonne Bertrams’ poems are innovative, conceptually thoughtful work. Through experimentation and muscular lyricism, Bertram maintains a style that observes a speaker’s attempt to understand and exert multiple identities within the binary confines of race and gender.
Playing and gliding from acrostics to sonnets to maps, these compassionate, cerebral, and irreverent poems plainly recognize the larger and potentially escapable oppressive systems that dominate all of our lives by narrating the exhaustion that comes from living under constraining systems of relentless extraction, systems whose powers fracture all attempts at genuine love and intimacy.
Tawes Hall