Dialogue: Crafting Voices with Soham Patel and Tonya M. Foster

Spend an afternoon immersed in poetry and engaging conversation with poets Soham Patel and Tonya M. Foster, moderated by poet Sara Borjas. Listen as the poets share excerpts from their works, followed by a discussion on the evolution and nature of their poetry. Explore how they navigate the creative process, process emotions through poetry and witness the reciprocal transformation between themselves and their work. These three unique voices, each with their own perspective, promise a glimpse into the experience of crafting poetry as women of color. 

Light refreshments will be served. Books will be available at the event. 

Soham Patel is the author of all one in the end—/water (Delete Press, 2022), and of four chapbooks of poetry including and nevermind the storm, New Weather Drafts and the full-length collections to afar from afar and ever really hear it. Patel is a poetry editor at The Georgia Review and Fence. She was the winner of the 2017 Subito Prize and Kundiman fellow. She teaches at Virginia Tech.

Tonya M. Foster is a poet, essayist, editor and Black feminist scholar. She is the author of A Swarm of Bees in High Court, the bilingual chapbook La Grammaire des Os and coeditor of Third Mind: Teaching Creative Writing through Visual Art. Her writing and research focus on poetry, poetics, ideas of place and emplacement, and on intersections between the visual and the written. Forthcoming publications include the poetry collection—Thingifications (Ugly Duckling Presse), as well as a two-volume compendium on the Umbra Writers Workshop--The Umbra Galaxy (Wesleyan University Press) and an anthology of experimental creative drafts (Nightboat Books). Raised in New Orleans, she is a Louisianian from generations back on the maternal and paternal lines. Dr. Foster holds the George & Judy Marcus Endowed Chair in Poetry at San Francisco State University and is a member of an Emeryville Artists Co-op.

Sara Borjas is a self-identified Xicanx pocha and a Fresno poet. Her debut collection, Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff (Noemi Press, 2019) received a 2020 American Book Award and she was featured as one of Poets & Writers 2019 Debut Poets. She has received fellowships from MacDowell, Ragdale, CantoMundo, The Poetry Foundation, Sewanee Writers Conference, Postgraduate Writers Conference and Community of Writers. She believes that all Black lives matter and will resist white supremacy until Black liberation is realized. She teaches at California State University, East Bay and stays rooted in Fresno. 

Connect: 

Tonya M. Foster - Website 

Sara Borjas - Website | Sara Borjas - Instagram