Cantab Feature for December 18, 2019: Cam Awkward-Rich & Franny Choi

The Boston Poetry Slam is pleased to present a double feature to close the 2019 calendar year, including an early-bird workshop before doors open for the open mic. Click here for more information on the night’s generative workshop, or read on for more info on the night’s features.

Northampton poet and educator Cam Awkward-Rich. Photo by Samuel Ace.

Northampton poet and educator Cam Awkward-Rich. Photo by Samuel Ace.

Cameron Awkward-Rich is a black, trans writer and educator, currently living in Northampton, MA.

His first collection of poetry, Sympathetic Little Monster (Ricochet Editions, 2016), was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. His second collection, Dispatch, was the winner of the 2018 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice award and is forthcoming from Persea Books in December, 2019.

Cam is a poetry editor for Muzzle Magazine and has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Watering Hole, and Duke University’s Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies program. His poetry has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series,The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Cameron earned a PhD from Stanford University’s program in Modern Thought & Literature, and he is an assistant professor of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.


Kundiman Fellow Franny Choi. Photo by Graham Cotten.

Kundiman Fellow Franny Choi. Photo by Graham Cotten.

Franny Choi is a queer, Korean-American poet, playwright, teacher, organizer, pottymouth, GryffinClaw, & general overachiever. She is the author of two poetry collections, Soft Science (Alice James Books, 2019) & Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014), as well as a chapbook, Death by Sex Machine (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017). She has received awards from the Poetry Foundation & the Helen Zell Writers Program, as well as fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center & the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. Her poems have appeared in journals including Poetry Magazine, American Poetry Review, & New England Review, & her work has been featured by The Huffington Post, Ms. Magazine, PBSNewsHour, & Angry Asian Man. A Kundiman Fellow & graduate of the VONA Workshop, in 2016 she founded the Brew & Forge Book Fair, a fundraising project that brings together poetry readers & writers to build capacity in social justice community organizations.

Aside from writing and teaching, Franny is a Senior News Editor for Hyphen Magazine & hosts the Poetry Foundation podcast VS along with fellow poet Danez Smith. A member of the Dark Noise Collective, Franny is currently a Zell Postgraduate Fellow at the University of Michigan & a Citywide Poets Site Leader at Detroit School of Arts. She lives in Hamtramck, MI with some very resilient plants.

This show in our weekly Wednesday series takes place at the Cantab Lounge, 738 Massachusetts Ave. in Cambridge. Doors for the show open at 7:15. The open mic begins at 8:00 and the features perform at approximately 10:00. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $3.