Ohio Writers Series: Joey Kim and Ayendy Bonifacio

 

The Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County has a special treat lined up for patrons on Tuesday, August 9, when it welcomes Toledo, Ohio based poets Joey Kim and Ayendy Bonifacio. This event is part of the ongoing Ohio Writers Series at the Main Library, and like other events it includes readings by the authors, delicious mocktails, and an audience Q & A. Doors open at 6:30 pm at the Library’s Outdoor Annex,  201 N. Mulberry Street in Mount Vernon (rain site: Urton Clockhouse in Ariel Foundation Park).

The Library is offering a limited number of free copies of Body Facts by Joey Kim and To the River We are Migrants by Ayendy Bonifacio beginning Monday, August 1 at the Main Library, and continuing while supplies last. This program is part of the Humanities Grants for Libraries, an initiative of the American Library Association (ALA) made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) through the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.

Joey S. Kim, author of Body Facts, is a scholar, creative writer, and Assistant Professor of English at the University of Toledo. Her poetry ventures through Korean history, the feminine body, U.S. foreign policy, and coming-of-age in midwestern America. She researches nineteenth-century global Anglophone literature and poetics. Her work has been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Pleiades: Literature in Context, Burningword Literary Journal, Essays in Romanticism, and elsewhere. She is a 2020 Pushcart Prize nominee for her poem “Plunder,” which first appeared in Pleiades.

To the River, We Are Migrants is Ayendy Bonifacio’s second book, and Library patrons may recognize his name from previous workshops with the Library’s Teen Writing Program. Bonifacio was born in Santiago De Los Caballeros, Dominican Republic and raised in East New York, Brooklyn. He earned his Ph.D. from the Ohio State University and is an assistant professor of English at the University of Toledo. He writes and teaches about American Literature and culture and LatinX studies. His work has appeared in many academic journals, as well as The New York Times and The Los Angeles Review of Books. He is also the author of a memoir, Dique Dominican.

Upcoming Ohio Writers Series events include memoirist Ira Sukrungruang (September 20) and Lyn Ford (October 11), Affrilachian storyteller and author. The Library’s reading series is a collaboration with Mount Vernon Arts Consortium, the Kenyon Review, Kenyon College Office for Community Partnerships, and Ariel-Foundation Park.  

Reservations are encouraged, but not required for this program. Please visit www.knox.net, email knoxwrites1@gmail.com or call (740) 392-BOOK ext 259 for more information.

*Please note that in the event of inclement weather, this event will be relocated to Ariel Foundation Park’s Urton Clockhouse, 110 Pittsburgh Avenue, Mount Vernon. If the event is relocated, registered attendees will be notified by email, signs will be placed at the Main Library and a public announcement will be recorded at (740) 392-BOOK ext. 259 no later than 4 pm on the day of the event.

 

Information courtesy of the Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County