Poetry and Storytelling Event to Support Local Immigrants at Dolphin Bookshop Sat., April 29

An event entitled “Protest, Poetry & Prose” will be held Saturday, April 29 from 2-4 p.m. at Dolphin Bookshop featuring local poets and members of the Herstory Writers Workshop performing readings about the immigration experience. This literary event is a fundraiser for Long Island Jobs with Justice and its LI DREAM Solidarity Fund, which provides financial assistance to the families of local workers facing deportation.

“After a breadwinner is deported usually families need emergency assistance for things like rent, food, housing,” said Sonia Arora, one of the organizers of the event. “We are trying to help our immigrant neighbors here on Long Island while celebrating great poetry and prose.”

Participants include Sally Wen Mao, the author of Mad Honey Symposium (Alice James Books, 2014) and Oculus, forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2019. She is currently a fellow at the New York Public Library Cullman Center for Writers & Scholars. Francis Madi is a community organizer, DACAmented and queer artist residing on Long Island. Rahima Nasa is a Bangladesh-born, Bronx-bred freelance journalist based in New York City, where she reports on issues affecting the city’s vibrant immigrant communities. In 2016 she was an Open City Fellow at the Asian American Writer’s Workshop and currently helps produce stories for The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. The Herstory Writers Workshop runs weekly workshops in the jails in both Nassau and Suffolk counties help to put a human face on people caught in the criminal justice system. Approximately 225 women and girls participate in these workshops every year.

The Dolphin Bookshop in Port Washington has generously offered its cafe space to host the event. Wine, baked goods, cold and hot drinks are available there.

The suggested donation at the event will be $20, but those who cannot attend can support the effort at http://longislandjwj.org/donate/dream-solidarity-fund.

The event is co-sponsored with Long Island Together, a local collective of activists working to protect our most vulnerable communities and building community to advocate for progressive social change (longislandtogether.org).