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Barbara Fant - Joy in the Belly of a Riot Book Release

With Hanif Abdurraqib

Award-winning poet Barbara Fant celebrates the release of her latest collection, Joy in the Belly of a Riot. Barbara will perform new poems and discuss the creative process behind the new collection.

Award-winning poet Barbara Fant visits the Bexley Public Library to celebrate the release of her latest poetry collection, Joy in the Belly of a Riot, which has been called "a healing balm in times of sustained uncertainty and a rock upon which we can build and sustain a foundation of joy." Barbara will perform poems and discuss the creative process behind the new collection.

Columbus poet and author Hanif Abdurraqib will join Barbara for a reading and conversation.

About the Authors:

Barbara Fant is an acclaimed poet who has been writing and performing for over fifteen years. She has competed in nine National Poetry Slam competitions and placed 8th out of 96 poets in the 2017 Women of the World Poetry Slam. She is the author of two poetry collections: Paint, Inside Out (2010) from Penmanship Books and Mouths of Garden (2022) from Sundress Publications. Her work has been featured in the Academy of American Poets, Electric Literature, McNeese Review, The Ohio State University Press, Button Poetry, and Def Poetry Jam, amongst others. Additionally, she has received residencies in Havana, Cuba and Senegal, West Africa. She is the founder of Bloom Life Foundation Inc., the Black Women Rise Poetry Collective, and co-founder of the Senghor Project, West African International Artist Residency. Joy in the Belly of a Riot is her third collection of poetry.

Hanif Abdurraqib is an award-winning poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His newest release, There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension (Random House, 2024) was a New York Times Bestseller and longlisted for the National Book Award in nonfiction and the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. His previous book, A Little Devil In America (Random House, 2021) was a winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal and the Gordon Burn Prize. In 2021, Abdurraqib was named a MacArthur Fellow, and in 2024, was named a Windham-Campbell Prize recipient. He is a graduate of Beechcroft High School.

About the Book:

The acclaimed poetic force celebrates the practice of poetry as healing and prayer in this vital, life-affirming collection about surviving the void and touching the divine—the second book in a creative collaboration between Amistad and Moore Black Press.

At age fifteen, Barbara Fant tragically lost her mother, and her world was suddenly upended. “I became an angry teenager. I was mad at the world.,” she recalls. “I even stopped praying, but I began to write. Poetry became my way of communication, my way of processing . . . it became my way to pray.”

Rebirth, renewal, and healing are the heart of Joy in the Belly of a Riot. Fant’s monumental collection is a continuation of her lifelong project of using poetry as prayer; this is healing-informed poetry to restore herself, her community, and the world. Exquisitely lyrical and boldly resonant, Fant’s poems excavate the nightmares of a childhood marked by poverty, violence, racism, and the loss of countless loved ones. Suffering seemed endemic to neighborhoods like hers, and yet, in Fant’s own words, “I keep trying to write about the trauma, but the joy won’t let me.”

Steeped in a rich Black Christian tradition and drawing on Scripture for artistic inspiration, Fant’s verse offers solace and guidance for all, from the devout to the skeptical. In these poems Fant demands that we see her, and her community, through more than our grief. As she closes this profound collection, Fant gently preaches that we choose life and reminds us that “wholeness is our birthright.”

Joy in the Belly of a Riot is a healing balm in times of sustained uncertainty and a rock upon which we can build and sustain a foundation of joy. Fant’s essential message demands to be heard, now more than ever.

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