Heard and Healing: An Open Mic Night
Wednesday, April 19, 7–10PM PST
In-person at Honey’s at Star Love:
1532 N. Western Ave, LA, CA 90027
Free
In collaboration with violence prevention educator, artist, and organizer Alexia Sambrano (they/them) FCCW will hold an in-person Open Mic Night at Honey’s at Star Love. We invite you to prepare a short work and sign up to share, read, perform across genres — music, prose, poetry, spoken word, movement, or even primal scream! The evening will be hosted by Edwin Bodney, co-host of Da Poetry Lounge, one of the country’s largest and longest-running non-profit poetry venues. Stick around for the afterparty for DJ sets by F. Synthetic and Ghorba.
Consider alongside audience, friends, and community: What will it take to heal from our past traumas and pains? What will it take to be safe? What can we do to make healing, transformation, and liberation pleasurable? How can we defend ourselves and those we love from violence and trauma, not just in the physical sense, but in the emotional, psychological, and spiritual senses? What and who is stopping us from experiencing and sharing love and happiness, and how can we change that? Together, we can explore what it can take to make experiencing joy and pleasure a possibility and a reality.
We aim to facilitate a space for healing, to find joy with the people and communities we love. During the Open Mic Night, event participants will be in community with our contributors and with one another. This event is an opportunity to learn about the experiences and contributions of others, to learn, and to challenge assumptions, biases, practices and beliefs about an abolitionist framework to ending sexual violence and gender- and power-based harm.
To sign-up for the open mic, please send an email to [email protected] with your name and a brief description of your performance!
About the host & performers
Edwin Bodney (they/them) is a Black, Queer, non-binary artist, award-winning educator, and nationally recognized poet from Los Angeles. As someone living with M.S. and the rest of the world’s chaos, they strive to remind all vulnerable communities of their joy and laughter. Edwin and their work have been featured in platforms and publications like Button Poetry, Platypus Press, The Exposition Review, The Advocate, Lexus, TvOne, Amazon Prime, UW-Madison, and many others. Their full-length book of poetry, A Study of Hands (2017) is available for purchase through Not A Cult Media. Edwin is one of the current co-hosts of Da Poetry Lounge, one of the country’s largest and longest-running non-profit poetry venues.
Ashley August is black, alive, and loves a good list! She is an afro-latina actress, author, playwright, former Youth Poet Laureate of New York City, and named one of The New York Times 30 Under 30 Most Influential People. August is the author of three self-exploratory books, “Love Handles”, “Licorice” and “Say I Won’t”. She is the former curator and Slam Master of the Legendary Bowery Poetry Club. With Belize and Brooklyn embedded into her (he)art, August is motivated to speak the unsaid truth and push the boundaries of spoken word and on-screen performance to realms they’ve yet to live in.
Aman K. Batra is a nationally touring, Punjabi-American poet from Artesia, CA. She received her MFA in Poetry from Antioch University and graduated from UCLA with a BA in Creative Writing. She is a TEDx speaker, a National Poetry Slam finalist, and a
member of the 2016 and 2017 DPL Slam Team. Aman’s poetry is heavily tied to her work as an educator, activist, and intersectional feminist. Her work has been published in The Los Angeles Times, and featured on All Def Poetry, Button Poetry, The Huffington Post, and more. For more, visit amankbatra.com or follow her on social media @amankbatra.
Raul Herrera Jr. is a playwright, educator, and spoken word artist who has been involved with the Los Angeles-based education nonprofit, Get Lit — Words Ignite, for over 10 years helping empower youth through the arts. In 2018, he earned 4th place in the country for the AFA National Speech Tournament. His writing is featured in Get Lit Rising, Coiled Serpent published by Tia Chucha Press, LA Press, and In 2017, he wrote Dante, a modern Hip-Hop adaptation of Dante’s Inferno, produced by Tim Robbins and The Actor’s Gang Theatre in Culver City. In 2019, Raul featured as a writer and performer in the film Summertime, directed by Carlos Lopez Estrada, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020.
Robert “Bird” Lopez is a born and bred LA native. Queer, Mexerican poet by trade and your friendly neighbor weed guy by profession. This DPL veteran has worked with many youth populations across LA County, especially those impacted by the justice system and incarceration. He is always driven by the mission of living his best anime life!