Join us for a virtual poetry reading, Q&A, and writing prompt with poet and activist Saleem Hue Penny!

Saleem Hue Penny (him/friend) is a Black poet expanding the pastoral tradition of the Southern Black Belt using a "rural hip-hop blues" aesthetic. Drum loops, field sounds, gouache, and birch bark commonly punctuate his poetry; these hybrid audio/mixed media pieces are released under the moniker h.u.e (hope - uplifts - everything).

The 2021 Poetry Coalition Fellow at Zoeglossia, an Assistant Poetry Editor at Bellevue Literary Review, and a proud Cave Canem Fellow, his writing and hybrid art pieces explore how young people of color traverse wild spaces and define freedom on their own terms.

Saleem is committed to disability justice, not only as a macro social worker, mutual aid advocate, and volunteer Hospital Magician, but as a person with less-visible disabilities and health conditions such as Ramsay Hunt Syndrome, single-sided deafness, and Bipolar II. Care Work comes in many forms and is essential to our collective liberation.

He is compiling his first full-length poetry collection, battling against bull thistle in the community garden, and pursuing archival research for a long-form lyric essay set in Reconstruction-era “Affrilachia”.