
Join this special reading of five amazing Poets to kick-off National Pride Month!!
Open Mic following the Featured Readers — feel free to share one poem, one page.
Free and you’re welcome to just walk in but if you get tickets on Eventbrite, it would help us know how many people will attend https://www.eventbrite.com/e/diversecasey-poetry-nights-tickets-321426253577
Regie Cabico (he/him) is the first Asian American and openly queer poet to win the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam. He is a pioneer of the genre, later winning three national titles. His book, A Rabbit In Search of A Rolex will be published by Day Eight. He is the producer and co-curator of Homo Stanzas with Casey Catherine Moore, and Capturing Fire Slam.
Ishanee Chanda (she/her) is a prose writer and poet from Dallas, Texas. She is the author or two books of poetry titled Oh, these walls, they crumble (2017) and The Overflow (2018). Additionally, she has been published in the Eckleburg Project, Stoked Words: A Queer Anthology, Z Publishing House’s Emerging Texas Writers, Flypaper Magazine, and Apricity Press. She has participated in the BlackBox Writer’s Residency Program and was a part of a spoken word poetry scene in College Station, Texas known as Mic Check Poetry. Chanda currently resides in Washington, DC where she works full-time in the field of humanitarian aid and refugee response. She enjoys eating her weight in Thai food, singing loudly (and badly) to Taylor Swift, and playing the ukulele just to make people smile.
Heidi Mordhorst (she/her) is the author of two collections of poetry for young readers as well as contributions to journals and anthologies for both adults and children. She taught in early childhood classrooms for 35 years and recently served on the NCTE Excellence in Poetry Award Committee. Heidi now coaches young writers at WHISPERshout Writing Workshop in Montgomery County, Maryland.
H.L. Sudler (he/him) is the author of six books, including Patriarch: My Extraordinary Journey from Man to Gentleman (Archer Publishing, 2012), CafeLiving’s Favorite Cocktails (with Keith Vient, 2019), Man to Gentleman: A Beginner’s Guide to Manhood (2015), his short story collection The Looking Glass: Tales of Light and Dark (2018), and his thriller novel series Summerville (2014) and Return to Summerville (2017). His novellas include Sandman (2021), Midnight (2021), and Night As We Know It (2021). His short story “The Way of All Flesh” was selected for the PATHS Humanitarian Writing Award. He has served as a magazine publisher, a newspaper editor, and a contributing writer to numerous anthologies and periodicals. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and currently lives in Washington, DC.
Kim Roberts is the author of six books of poems, most recently Corona/Crown, a cross-disciplinary collaboration with photographer Robert Revere (forthcoming from WordTech Editions in November 2023). She is editor of the anthology By Broad Potomac’s Shore: Great Poems from the Early Days of our Nation’s Capital (University of Virginia Press, 2020), selected by the East Coast Centers for the Book for the 2021 Route 1 Reads program as the book that “best illuminates important aspects” of the culture of Washington, DC. For twenty years, she edited the literary journal Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and since 2010 she has co-curated the web exhibit, DC Writers’ Homes, with Dan Vera. Roberts is the author of the popular guidebook, A Literary Guide to Washington, DC: Walking in the Footsteps of American Writers from Francis Scott Key to Zora Neale Hurston (University of Virginia Press, 2018). In 2023, she was one named of five LGBTQ+ Poets-in-Residence at the Arts Club of Washington.