Join us for Happy Hour meets Works in Progress night. We'll hear and see the work of three of our Ruby fellows this year: Monica Sok, Annah Sidigu, and Breena Nuñez. They'll be sharing progress on the projects they're working on. Come learn about their work, and support your fellow Rubies!
About Monica Sok
Monica Sok is a Cambodian American poet and the daughter of former refugees. Her first book of poems A Nail the Evening Hangs On is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in 2020. Her work has been recognized with a Discovery Prize from the 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center. She is the recipient of fellowships from Hedgebrook, the Elizabeth George Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Kundiman, Jerome Foundation, MacDowell Colony, Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, and others. Currently, Sok is a 2018-2020 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and also teaches poetry at Banteay Srei, an organization in Oakland that serves Southeast Asian girls and women at-risk or engaged in sexual exploitation. She is originally from Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
About Breena Nuñez
Breena Nuñez (she/they) is an Afro Central American cartoonist based in Oakland by way of San Bruno, CA. She self-publishes autobiographical comics about the multiple identities she embodies as a queer Afrolatinx person of Salvadoran-Guatemalan descent. Readers can find some of her comics in anthologies and zines such as Tales from La Vida: A Latinx Comics Anthology, La Horchata Zine: Invierno Issue 2018, and Drawing Power: Women's Stories of Sexual Violence, Harassment, and Survival. They have also spoken at various conferences along the West Coast on why comics are necessary tools for revealing the truth about underrepresented identities within communities of color. More currently Breena is pursuing an MFA in Comics at California College of the Arts while creating a graphic memoir about her first journey to El Salvador as a self-conscious teenager during the early 2000's. Her personal philosophy behind making comics is creating spaces for folks of color who thrive on living as outliers of society.
If not at home, most likely they are traveling to a zine fest or indie comic convention selling comics while being high off of caffeine.
About Annah Omune Sidigu
Annah Omune Sidigu is a Kenyan-American songwriter and poet. You can listen to some of her music at annahsidigu.bandcamp.com. You can also catch Annah on Twitter where she intermittently socializes.
A recipient of a scholarship from Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, Annah currently reviews books for Zyzzyva magazine. Her poetry or essays have been published in or will appear in Ninth Letter and the New England Review.
In addition to collaborations with fellow musicians, Annah is seeking co-facilitators for a poetry workshop focused on forms.