Pair of Award-Winning Poets Convey Their Love of Words
At Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus, October 4

Brooklyn, N.Y. — Two poets, one from Texas and the other from the Caribbean, now settled in Brooklyn, will read from their works at Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus.

Tish Benson and Roger Bonair Agard will give readings, as part of the English Department’s multicultural “Voices of the Rainbow” series, on Monday, October 4, at 10 a.m. in the Humanities Building, Room 210. The event is free and open to the public. 

Poet, screenwriter and playwright, former Texan Tish Benson is the recipient of a Franklin Furnace Performance Grant and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and is a Nuyorican Grand Slam Champion. Her latest book is “Wild Like That: Good Stuff Smellin Strong.” Her film, “Hairstory,” aired on Lifetime Television and won awards from the Link’s Film Festival and the Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival.

A native of Trinidad and Tobago, Roger Bonair Agard is the author of “…And Chaos Congealed” and co-author of “Burn Down the House.” He co-founded the Louder Arts Project, aimed at nurturing the craftsmanship in poetry. Bonair Agard was the 1998 Nuyorican Poets’ Café Fresh Poet of the Year and a two-time National Poetry Slam Champion. He has appeared on HBO’s “Def Poetry Jam” and the “MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour.”

The “Voices of the Rainbow” series is funded by the office of Provost Gale Stevens Haynes. For more information, call (718) 488-1109.

Long Island University opened its Brooklyn Campus in 1926, welcoming a diverse population at a time when other major universities enforced quota systems against racial and ethnic minorities. Some 31,000 students currently are enrolled at the university’s three residential and three regional campuses, including more than 12,000 at the Brooklyn Campus. Located at the corner of Flatbush Avenue Extension and DeKalb Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn, the Campus is accessible to all major bus and subway routes and the Long Island Rail Road.