Join CBAW for our annual winter solstice poetry reading.
About this Event

Join CBAW for Glowing in the Dark, our annual winter solstice reading. Hosted by Hari Alluri and Seema Reza, featuring readings from writers whose work sustains us, helps us to balance the light and darkness in both bright and difficult times. Featuring readings by Jay Anderson, Anne Barlieb, Aaron Caycedo-Kimura, Teri Ellen Cross Davis, LaQuantae, Maya Marshall, Diana Osborn, Rick Writes, and more. Please bring a candle to light with us.
Stay after the reading for our Visual Art Program with Veteran and Artist, Shaun Smith. Bring your medium of choice to learn how to paint a flame.

Hari Alluri (he/him/siya) is author of The Flayed City (Kaya Press) and chapbooks The Promise of Rust (Mouthfeel Press) and Our Echo of Sudden Mercy (Next Page Press). He is co-editor of We Were Not Alone (Community Building Art Works) and co-founding editor at Locked Horn Press. Recipient of the Vera Manuel Prize for Poetry, siya has received grants, fellowships, and residencies from the BC Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, The Capilano Review, Deer Lake, Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, and others. His work appears through these venues and elsewhere: AALR, Apogee, Four Way Review, Marías at Sampaguitas, Poetry, ti-TCR, and—via Split This Rock—Best of the Net 2022. @harialluri | https://linktr.ee/harialluri

Seema Reza is the author of A Constellation of Half-Lives & When the World Breaks Open. Her writing has appeared in print and on-line in McSweeney’s, The Washington Post, The Feminist Wire, Bellevue Literary Review, The Offing, Full Grown People, and The Nervous Breakdown among others, and has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has taught poetry in classrooms, jails, hospitals, and universities, and has performed across the country at universities, theaters, festivals, bookstores, conferences, & one fine mattress shop.

Shaun Smith is a Retired U.S. Army Veteran and Fine Artist based in Northern Maine. Shaun served 10 years as a Combat Medic with a tour in Afghanistan. During that time he was awarded The Combat Medic Badge for providing care under fire and a Purple Heart for injuries sustained from a VBIED. Shaun found comfort in art therapy as a way to express his experiences, leading him to enroll into an art university. Shaun graduated from The Academy of Art University of San Francisco with a Bachelors in Fine art Painting in 2021. Shaun dedicates his time to painting landscapes, wildlife, and peaceful moments.

Community Building Art Works (CBAW) is a charitable organization that builds healthy and connected communities where veterans and civilians share creative expression, mutual understanding, and support through workshops led by professional artists. Seema Reza is the chair of CBAW and facilitates a multi-hospital arts program that encourages use of the arts as a tool for narration, self-care, and socialization for those struggling with emotional and physical injuries. CBAW Website