Elwin Cotman in conversation with Leigh Dana Jackson.

The official book launch for Bay Area writer Elwin Cotman’s new collection, Weird Black Girls. Elwin Cotman will be joined in conversation with Lisa D. Gray.

A night of poetry with:

Alix (@baddogbooks) is a writer and bookbinder living in the sweaty town of New Orleans. They run a small bookbinding business called Bad Dog Books (named after their bad chihuahua), are a contributing editor and book artist at Tilted House, and love to watch fruit rot away in their kitchen. They have been published in Fine Point Press and Tilted House, and have self-published most of their work. They have tried every ice cream place in New Orleans despite being mildly lactose intolerant.

Elwin Cotman is a storyteller from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the author of three collections of speculative short stories, The Jack Daniels Sessions EP, Hard Times Blues, and Dance on Saturday, which was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award. He is also author of The Wizard's Homecoming (2023, Nomadic Press) as well as the upcoming Weird Black Girls (2024, Scribner) and The Age of Ignorance (2025, Scribner). Cotman earned his BA from the University of Pittsburgh and his MFA from Mills College.

grace (ge) gilbert is a poet, essayist, and collage worker based in Pittsburgh. theyreceived their MFA in poetry from the University of Pittsburgh in 2022. theyare the authorof 3 chapbooks: the closeted diaries: essays (Porkbelly Press 2022), NOTIFICATIONS IN THE DARK (Antenna Books 2023), and today is an unholy suite (Barrelhouse 2023). theywere the MCLA Under 27 Writer-in-Residence Fellow at Mass MoCA. their work can be found in 2023's Best of the Net Anthology, the Indiana Review, Ninth Letter, Passages North, the Offing, the Adroit Journal, Hayden's Ferry Review, Diode, Foglifter, TYPO, ANMLY, and elsewhere. theycurrently teach hybrid collage and poetics courses at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, and they are a 2023 Visiting Teaching Artist at the Poetry Foundation. theyare passionate about making the hybrid arts accessible to all. find more at gracegegilbert.com. 

Margaret Saigh is a writer, dancer, and teacher. She is the author of the chapbook CROSSED IN THE DARKER LIGHT OF TERROR (dancing girl press 2022), a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Pittsburgh, and the creator of circlet, a virtual poetry workshop. Her poems have been featured in Annulet Poetics Journal and Figure 1, and are forthcoming in Pitymilk Press and A Velvet Giant, among others.

Elwin Cotman will be reading from his new book from Nomadic Press along with Devin Samuels and Binx River Perino.

Binx River Perino is a queer poet from Texas, completing their Masters of Fine Arts in creative writing at Emerson College in Boston. Their work can be found in Variant Literature, Mixed Magazine, Cold Mountain Review, GASHER, and elsewhere.

Devin Samuels has been an arts educator teaching and performing poetry nationally for the past 15 years. With a strong investment in community, Devin Samuels has spent years cultivating youth and adult arts education spaces.  His pedagogy utilizes poetics and the radical imagination to grow critical thinking, self-reflection, and empathy as primary drivers of social change. Devin is a 2017 Poetry Foundation Incubator Fellow and his work can be found in City & Sea Poetry Anthology, Slag Review, Wayne Literary Review 2018 and Systemic Crises of Global Climate Change: Intersections of Race, Class, and Gender. Devin Samuels currently serves on the board of Detroit Jews for Justice, is the Co-Director of the Providence Poetry Slam, and an active member of multiple movement and arts organizations. 

A reading from The Wizard’s Homecoming

A night of readings by poets Elwin Cotman, Brionne Janae, Henry Mills, and Mal Profeta.

Elwin Cotman is a storyteller from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the author of three collections of speculative short stories, The Jack Daniels Sessions EP, Hard Times Blues, and Dance on Saturday. He is also author of The Wizard's Homecoming (2023, Nomadic Press) and the upcoming collection Weird Black Girls (2024, Scribner). Cotman earned his BA from the University of Pittsburgh and his MFA from Mills College.

Brionne Janae is a poet and teaching artist living in Brooklyn. They are the author of Blessed are the Peacemakers (2021) which won the 2020 Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize, and After Jubilee (2017) published by Boat Press. Brionne is a 2023 NEA Creative Writing Fellow, a Hedgebrook Alum and proud Cave Canem Fellow. Their poetry has been published in Best American Poetry 2022, Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, The Sun Magazine, jubilat, and Waxwing among others. Brionne is the co-host of the podcast: The Slave is Gone alongside poet Jericho Brown and Rogue Scholar Aífe Murray. Off the page they go by Breezy.

Henry Mills was born in DC to a Salvadoran mother and a Jewish-American father. His work has appeared in Origins Journal, The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States, and Epiphany Magazine. He received an MFA in poetry from New York University.

mal profeta is a public health advocate and holds an MFA in creative writing from New York University. They received the Fugue Poetry Prize, and their work appears in Aesthetica International Creative Writing Anthology and the University of Canberra International Creative Writing Anthology.

Reading + open mic

A night of readings by poets Elwin Cotman and Lourdes Figueroa. Both poets will be reading from their new books published this year by Nomadic Press.

Elwin Cotman is a storyteller from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the author of three collections of speculative short stories, The Jack Daniels Sessions EP, Hard Times Blues, and Dance on Saturday. He is also author of The Wizard's Homecoming (2023, Nomadic Press) and the upcoming collection Weird Black Girls (2024, Scribner). Cotman earned his BA from the University of Pittsburgh and his MFA from Mills College.

Lourdes Figueroa is a Chicanx poet. Her poems are a dialogue of her lived experience when her family worked in el azadón in Yolo County. The words el azadón are used by the ones who work in the fields — the work of tilling the soil under the blistering sun. She is the author of the chapbooks yolotl and Ruidos = To Learn Speak, completed during her Alley Cat Books Residency. Her chapbook Vuelta was recently published by Nomadic Press and can be found at Medicine For Nightmares Bookshop in the Mission and SPD. She works and lives in Oakland with her wife, filmmaker, Peggy Peralta and their red nose pitbull Agnéa. She is a native of limbo nation. Lourdes continues to believe in your lung and your throat.

Come celebrate the release of Bay Area writer Elwin Cotman's new poetry collection, The Wizard's Homecoming. There will be readings from Cotman and comics artist Dan McCloskey, among others. Books available for sale.

Elwin Cotman is a storyteller from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the author of three collections of speculative short stories, The Jack Daniels Sessions EP, Hard Times Blues, and Dance on Saturday. He is also author of The Wizard's Homecoming (2023, Nomadic Press) and the upcoming collection Weird Black Girls (2024, Scribner). Cotman earned his BA from the University of Pittsburgh and his MFA from Mills College.

Dan McCloskey is a comic artist from Kutztown, PA. At the age of 21, Dan founded the Cyberpunk Apocalypse writers’ project in Pittsburgh, which housed 45 writers from across the US and Canada and hosted hundreds of literary events. He is the author of A Film About Billy (2012, Six Gallery Press), the independent comic Free Money, and most recently Cloud Town (2022, Amulet Books). He now lives and works in Oakland, CA.