About This Event
Join us in celebrating the publication of Resting Bitch Face, the second full-length collection from award-winning Cincinnati-based poet Taylor Byas. Dr. Byas will be joined by former Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate Yalie Saweda Kamara, and poet, conceptual artist, and theologian Ajanaé Dawkins
This event is free and open to the public. Advanced registration is recommended. Copies of Resting Bitch Face are available through Downbound Books for preorder HERE.
Taylor Byas is an award-winning poet and a Black Chicago native currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her poetry collection I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times won the Maya Angelou Book Award, the Ohioana Book Award, the CHIRBy Award, and the BCALA Best Poetry Honor. She is also a co-editor of The Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol X: Alabama from Texas Review Press, and of Poemhood: Our Black Revival, a YA anthology on Black folklore from HarperCollins.
Yalie Saweda Kamara is a Sierra Leonean-American writer, researcher, and educator from Oakland, Ca. She is the Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate Emerita. Her debut poetry collection, Besaydoo (Milkweed Editions, 2024), was the winner of the 2022-2023 Jake Adam York Prize and a finalist for the 2025 Ohio Book Award in Poetry and the 2025 Firecracker Award in Poetry. She received a PhD in Creative Writing and English Literature from the University of Cincinnati; an MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University; and an MA in French Culture and Civilization from Middlebury College. An assistant professor of English at Xavier University, she teaches courses in global and diasporic literature, creative writing, and hip-hop studies. For more: www.yaylala.com
Ajanaé Dawkins is a poet, conceptual artist and theologian raised between Metro Detroit and New Rochelle, NY. She works through poetry, visual art, performance, and audio to explore the politics of faith, grief, and intimate relationships between Black women. As a theologian, she blends cultural criticism, memoir, and theology as autotheory to consider the relationship between Black church history, spirituality, and creation. Her work has appeared in Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, The Rumpus, Prairie Schooner, and more. Her exhibition, No One Teaches Us How To Be Daughters, debuted at Urban Arts Space in 2024. Her chapbook, BLOOD-FLEX, won the New Delta Review prize. Ajanaé is an Elizabeth George Grant Recipient and Writing Freedom Fellow. She was the Taft Museum’s 2022 Duncanson Artist in Residence and Ohio State University’s 2024 UAS Community Artist in Residence. She is a fellow of Torch Literary, The Watering Hole, and Pink Door. She cohosts the VS Podcast with Brittany Rogers at the Poetry Foundation.
About This Event
Join us in celebrating the publication of Resting Bitch Face, the second full-length collection from award-winning Cincinnati-based poet Taylor Byas. Dr. Byas will be joined by former Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate Yalie Saweda Kamara, and poet, conceptual artist, and theologian Ajanaé Dawkins
This event is free and open to the public. Advanced registration is recommended. Copies of Resting Bitch Face are available through Downbound Books for preorder HERE.
Taylor Byas is an award-winning poet and a Black Chicago native currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her poetry collection I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times won the Maya Angelou Book Award, the Ohioana Book Award, the CHIRBy Award, and the BCALA Best Poetry Honor. She is also a co-editor of The Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol X: Alabama from Texas Review Press, and of Poemhood: Our Black Revival, a YA anthology on Black folklore from HarperCollins.
Yalie Saweda Kamara is a Sierra Leonean-American writer, researcher, and educator from Oakland, Ca. She is the Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate Emerita. Her debut poetry collection, Besaydoo (Milkweed Editions, 2024), was the winner of the 2022-2023 Jake Adam York Prize and a finalist for the 2025 Ohio Book Award in Poetry and the 2025 Firecracker Award in Poetry. She received a PhD in Creative Writing and English Literature from the University of Cincinnati; an MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University; and an MA in French Culture and Civilization from Middlebury College. An assistant professor of English at Xavier University, she teaches courses in global and diasporic literature, creative writing, and hip-hop studies. For more: www.yaylala.com
Ajanaé Dawkins is a poet, conceptual artist and theologian raised between Metro Detroit and New Rochelle, NY. She works through poetry, visual art, performance, and audio to explore the politics of faith, grief, and intimate relationships between Black women. As a theologian, she blends cultural criticism, memoir, and theology as autotheory to consider the relationship between Black church history, spirituality, and creation. Her work has appeared in Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, The Rumpus, Prairie Schooner, and more. Her exhibition, No One Teaches Us How To Be Daughters, debuted at Urban Arts Space in 2024. Her chapbook, BLOOD-FLEX, won the New Delta Review prize. Ajanaé is an Elizabeth George Grant Recipient and Writing Freedom Fellow. She was the Taft Museum’s 2022 Duncanson Artist in Residence and Ohio State University’s 2024 UAS Community Artist in Residence. She is a fellow of Torch Literary, The Watering Hole, and Pink Door. She cohosts the VS Podcast with Brittany Rogers at the Poetry Foundation.
Getting There
Contemporary Arts Center
44 E 6th St
Cincinnati, Ohio 45202
United States