Saida Agostini is Torch literary Arts Featured Artist of July

when I say I love my family what I mean is I worship the battle

Torch Literary Arts, a non-profit literary organization with the goal of raising the creative voices of black women writers, has selected Saida Agostini as their featured artist of July. Included in the feature is a sampling of her work and a substantive interview with Saida. Read the entire feature here and find an excerpt of the interview below.

Saida Agostini is a queer Afro-Guyanese poet whose work explores the ways Black folks harness mythology to enter the fantastic. Her first full-length poetry collection, let the dead in, is an exploration of the mythologies that seek to subjugate Black bodies, and the counter-stories that reject such subjugation. You can pick up a copy of let the dead in wherever you buy books, or check out our dedicated shop here

Excerpt from Torch's interview with Saida Agostini

Your writing is rich with images of desire and love but also leans into the realities of pain and injustice. How do these subjects influence your work?

Our bodies were built for pleasure. What a miracle of atoms. I think one of the prevailing tragedies of misogynoir and capitalism is that we as Black folks are constantly pushed to be divorced from our physicality and pleasure. Audre Lorde defines the erotic as a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. We have a right to our etiology, our chaos, our power. I want us to know the full scope of our power, and the history of it, what it took, what it continues to take to survive this beast called America. My work seeks to recount these histories, and offer a full-throated vision of Black freedom where our pleasure is never denied.

Torch Literary Arts Feature Order Let the Dead in follow saida on twitter

Episode 15 of LFTRR Examines Kickass Female Characters in Three Novels

July 29, 2020

James J. Patterson extends his string of excellent episodes concerning women writers of literature. On this, the fifteenth(!) episode of LFTRR, he looks at three contemporary novels dear to his heart, all of which feature strong-willed female characters.