Evelyn returns home to celebrate the release of her latest poetry chapbook, T4T. Enjoy a rapturous reading of poetry by Evelyn herself as well as local poets Daphne Maysonet and Brandi DeHaven. Partake in hors d'oeuvres and libations for an enjoyable, cathartic evening filled with beautiful poetry. PRAISE FOR T4T
T4T is both a celebration and a bittersweet exploration of what it's like to be queer and trans today. Between the transphobic nonsense we face and the doom-scrolling we succumb to, there is a deep hunger for ourselves and for others like us that T4T captures perfectly.
—Archie Bongiovanni, author of Mimosa, Grease Bats, & Flagging 101
Lest one forget pleasure is a human right, Evelyn Berry edges the reader toward that realization—again, and again, and again—in T4T. Of course, pleasure is sexual, the way that lovers “pretend our freckles honeysuckle.” But it’s not just sexual; it’s beyond sexual. It is the pleasure of life, of embodiment, of safety, and of care and attention. (The latter of which are two descriptors I could easily also apply to Berry’s craft. Those line breaks, like a switchblade surprise!) And the title says who the pleasure is for, and with whom the pleasure is shared: trans for trans, that delectable “erotic symmetry.” But pleasure, unlike some romantic notions of it, isn’t best when it is fleeting. Pleasure is best enjoyed, transmutated and ever evolving, over long lives. In “stay here,” the chapbook’s arietta for transfemmes, Berry writes, “love you here, / love you safe, love you more than everything.” The speaker here can’t tune out the background noise of American fascism, eviction notices, egg price hikes, hashtags to memorialize yet another trans woman who has been murdered, but the knowledge of what’s at risk and the vision of what can be in a trans-utopic alternate reality, leaves Berry with a choice: What is the best proof of her “glittering / luminescent” life? It’s not the wound—“no, i won’t flaunt the wound to prove i’m alive,” she insists. It’s physical connection, feral desire: “kiss me,” she writes, “remind me i’m still here.”
—Emilia Phillips, author of Nonbinary Bird of Paradise, Embouchure, & Empty Clip
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Evelyn Berry (she/her) is the trans, Southern author of Grief Slut (Sundress Publications, 2024) and the chapbooks Buggery (Bateau Press, 2020) and T4T (Small Harbor Editions, 2026). She is the recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship and South Carolina Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship for Poetry. She is the winner of the BOOM Chapbook Prize, Button Poetry Short Form Contest, Dr. Linda Veldheer Memorial Prize, KAKALAK Poetry Prize, Emrys Poetry Prize, Broad River Prize for Prose, and other honors. Her work has appeared in dozens of journals, including Beloit Poetry Journal, Raleigh Review, The Normal School, Gigantic Sequins, Longleaf Review, Taco Bell Quarterly, and elsewhere. She lives in Columbia, SC with her partners and their cats.
Event Venue
978 Broad Street, Augusta, GA, United States, Georgia 30901
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