Heather Buchanan hosts a reading and book signing with writers from Black Fire—This Time, Volume 2, a powerful new anthology of poetry, fiction, essays and drama that explores the history and legacy of the Black Arts Movement. Black Fire features over seventy-five poets and writers who come together on the ongoing theme of "Black is Beautiful, Black is Powerful, Black is Home." Readers include Judy Juanita, Michael Warr, Tureeda Mikell, Sheila Smith McKoy, Mark Allan Davis, Lakiba Pittman and Thurman Watts. 

Heather Buchanan is an award-winning publisher and the owner of Aquarius Press/Willow Books, which publishes many of the nation’s top poets and writers of color. She is also the director of the Black Fire This Time National Tour. 

Judy Juanita joined fellow student protesters to revolutionize American higher education and create the nation’s first Black Studies department at San Francisco State University in the 1960s. She is a widely published award-winning writer. 

Michael Warr has received many literary honors, including a 2021 San Francisco Arts Commission Artist Award and the 2020 Berkeley Poetry Festival Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a board member of the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. 

Tureeda Mikell, the “Story Medicine Woman,” has published 72 at-risk student anthologies. Her full-length collection, Synchronicity: The Oracle of Sun Medicine (2020), was nominated for the California Book Award. 

Sheila Smith McKoy is an award-winning poet, fiction writer and filmmaker. She is the recipient of the 2020 Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Prize in poetry. 

Mark Allan Davis is an Associate Professor of Africana Studies in Black Performance Studies/Dramatic Literature and Music/Theatre History at San Francisco State University. Mr. Davis is an original cast member of The Lion King on Broadway and is an internationally recognized director, choreographer, dramaturg and playwright. 

Lakiba Pittman is a poet/artist and educator, who teaches diversity, media, race and social justice at Menlo College, and mindfulness and compassion at the Compassion Institute and Stanford University. She was featured at the 50th-year celebration of the Black Arts Movement and in Black Fire This Time, Volume I. Lakiba’s poetry sparks self-healing, spiritual consciousness and awareness. 

Thurman Watts was born in San Francisco and is an alumnus of Willamette University. In the 1970s he formed the Nairobi Poets with David Rages and Joseph McNair. In 2022 his short story “Mbombe’s Glass” was featured in the anthology Black Fire This Time, Vol. 1. 

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