Free event but RSVP is strongly encouraged.
Doors open at 5:30pm
Reading & Music at 6:00pm
Parking
Signed books, alcoholic, and non-alcoholic beverages available for purchase.
Join Story Parlor for a book launch of Mildred Kiconco Barya’s poetry collection, The Animals of My Earth School, accompanied by music from Jeremias Zunguze.
Mildred Kiconco Barya is a writer from Uganda and teaches creative writing at UNC-Asheville. Her publications include four poetry books, as well as prose, hybrids, and poems published in Shenandoah, Joyland, The Cincinnati Review, Tin House, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Her recent poetry collection, The Animals of My Earth School, is published by Terrapin Books, 2023. Barya is working on a collection of creative nonfiction, and her essay, “Being Here in This Body”, won the 2020 Linda Flowers Literary Award and is published in the North Carolina Literary Review. She serves on the boards of African Writers Trust, Story Parlor, and coordinates the Poetrio Reading events at Malaprop’s Independent Bookstore/Café. She blogs here: www.mildredbarya.com
Jeremias Zunguze
Born and raised in Mozambique, Jeremias Zunguze is an associate professor of Africana Studies at UNC Asheville. He's also a guitarist, singer, and songwriter.
Praise for the Animals…
“In the compassionate, playful, fable-like poems of The Animals of My Earth School, Mildred Kiconco Barya awakens us to the vividly singing, fully alive, non-human communities surrounding us. These poems demonstrate poetry’s unique ability to prick us from our self-involved numbness and awaken us to wonder. There is great solace, tenderness, and innocence here—the kind of innocence capable of apprehending the creatures of the world—and thus the world itself—afresh. Like a literary Noah’s ark of song, The Animals of My Earth School provides a place where all may dance and thrive. These poems provide pleasure and a glimmer of hope.” —Michael Hettich