Willow Books, the Award-Winning Division of Aquarius Press
Welcome to Willow Books
The award-winning division of AQUARIUS PRESS
Our Kickoff Event @ MoAD was a success!
Black Fire This Time National Tour
Support our national tour! Featuring over 70 black poets and writers across the country. Cities include San Francisco, Washington, DC, New Orleans, New York and Atlanta.
$5.00
The momentum for the BLACK FIRE—THIS TIME (2022) anthology continues to grow and has reached the notice of the New York Review of Books. In today’s article, “A New Flame for Black Fire: What Will be the Legacy of the Black Arts Movement?” author and MacArthur “Genius” Fellow Ishmael Reed describes Black Fire This Time as heralding a new golden age of Black writing for the 2000s. READ MORE
Black Fire This Time Featured in New York Review of Books!
Please support our national events with a VIRTUAL TICKET. Your ticket purchase gives you access to streamed events and priority seating at live events. Your ticket purchase helps our poets with travel to events and enables us to continue to provide free events to the public. Thank you!
OUR NATIONAL TOUR IS UNDERWAY! The National Black American Read-In (NBARI) kicks off this February and runs throughout the year. NBARI is a celebration of excellence by Black poets, writers and playwrights within our communities. Our kick-off event is at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) on February 23, 2023. Please check in often at our website for calendar updates: www.WillowLit.net
A new anthology on the history and legacy of the Black Arts Movement. Featuring over 100 poets and writers, including Nikki Giovanni, Ishmael Reed, Sonia Sanchez, James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Amiri Baraka, Wanda Coleman, Haki Madhubuti, Lucille Clifton, Margaret Walker, Askia Toure, Umar bin Hasan,Denise Nicholas and many other legends bridged with contemporary talents writing in the tradition. BFTT events are taking place nationwide throughout the year with a special live event at the San Francisco Public Library in November and the Museum of the African Diaspora in early 2023.
Black Fire This Time
Critically-acclaimed anthology featuring over 100 poets and writers on the history and legacy of the Black Arts Movement. Includes the last living legends Sonia Sanchez, Ishmael Reed, Askia Toure, Eugene B. Redmond and Haki Madhubuti. Intergenerational collection featuring new talents writing in the tradition including San Francisco Poet Laureates devorah major and Tongo Eisen-Martin and Louisiana Laureate Mona Lisa Saloy. Special price thru February 28. *Price includes shipping.
$35.00
Recent Events:
COMING SOON!
Scenes from FRESHWATER ROAD as it appears in Black Fire This Time
“This anthology is a breakthrough…It’s only in the U.S. where black literature is marginalized…Black Fire—This Time is the Genius of Black Folk that brings so many factions together, a mélange of young and old…” —Ishmael Reed, MacArthur “Genius” Fellow
Hailed as nearly 60 years in the making, Black Fire—This Time is an invaluable historic collection.
“We. Need. Fire.
We are just as. Pushed aside as ever
And have to fight for respect.”
—Adrienne Kennedy, 2022 Gold Medal for Drama, The American Academy of Arts and Letters
NEW! BLACK FIRE THIS TIME NETWORK
SUBSCRIBE for free episodes: AUXmedia Broadcasts Channel (YouTube)
Poet Dr. Kathryn Takara on her work in Black Arts literature and black Hawai’ian literature
with Moderator Dr. Kim McMillon
Premiere Events
Black Fire—This Time shows that the 2020s might be the new Golden Age of Black writing.”
from the Foreword by Ishmael Reed, MacArthur Fellow
Includes work by Denise Nicholas, actress (Room 222, In the Heat of the Night), author (Freshwater Road) and activist (Free Southern Theater).
COMING SOON–BILINGUAL EDITION
Imaginary Animal 2nd Edition by Rachelle Linda Escamilla, Library of Congress, Hispanic Division
“Raising King is a groundbreaking poetry collection that helps to rescue the radically compassionate legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Joseph Ross brilliantly reminds us that King’s power derived from the way in which he forced American and global citizens to confront uncomfortable truths about race, poverty, citizenship, and war. A must read.”
—Peniel Joseph, author of The Sword and the Shield: Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Willow is pleased to announce the next wave of authors:
Amoja Sumler, University of Baltimore
Amoja Sumler is a recent graduate of the MFA program at the University of Baltimore.
American Foibles & Other ‘Merican Sins: A Gothic Noir
Dasan Ahanu, visiting professor at UNC-Chapel Hill
Christopher Massenburg, better known as Dasan Ahanu, is a public speaker, organizer, curator, educator, poet, spoken word artist, educator, songwriter, and emcee, and loyal Hip Hop head born and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina. He is co-founder and managing director of Black Poetry Theatre, a Durham-based theatre company that creates and produces original poetry and spoken word based productions.
Willow Books has released Shackled Freedom: Black Lives in the American South
Willow Arts Alliance Harlem Arts Salon, hosted by Randall and Ruby, 2018
Since 2012, LitFest has appeared in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Seattle, Minneapolis and Los Angeles. 2018 is the first New York appearance. A pioneer in the live streaming of literary events, LitFest is a signature program of Willow Books, a publisher that develops and promotes poets and writers of color. MORE
2018 WILLOW ARTS ALLIANCE NYC FELLOWS
Nkosi Nkululeko
Maria Fernanda Snellings
Nicholas Nichols
Our new group of fellows were featured in East Harlem, New York, along with special guests. 2020 Fellows application information coming soon.
Refugeed: Exodus Poems by Reginald Flood (2018)
Poetry collection based on slave narratives recorded by the Federal Writers’ Project of President Roosevelt’s Works Projects Administration. “Refugeed” slaves were conveyed away from the advance of Federal forces in the American South.
RECENT AUTHORS!
Latha Viswanathan has worked as a journalist, copywriter, editor and teacher in India, London, Manila, Montreal, Toronto and the United States. These stories have appeared in major American literary magazines and won awards. Her work received a grant from the Texas Commission of the Arts in Fiction, was published in Best New Stories from the South and broadcast on National Public Radio. She currently lives and writes in Houston.
Keisha-Gaye Anderson is a Jamaican-born poet, writer, visual artist, and media professional based in Brooklyn, NY. Her debut poetry collection Gathering the Waters (Jamii Publishing 2014) was accepted into the Poets House Library and the National Library of Jamaica. Her poetry collection, A Spell for Living, received the Editors’ Choice recognition for the 2017 Numinous Orisons, Luminous Origin Literary Award, and is forthcoming from Agape Editions in 2019 as a multimedia e-book, including music and Keisha’s original artwork. Keisha is a past participant of the VONA Voices and Callaloo writing workshops, a former fellow of the North Country Institute for Writers of Color, and was short-listed for the Small Axe Literary Competition. Most recently, she was named an Institute Scholar for the 2018 Writing from the Margins Institute at Bloomfield College. Keisha is a graduate of the Syracuse University Newhouse School and holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from The City College, CUNY.
Roberto Carlos Garcia’s book, Melancolía, is available from Červená Barva Press. His second collection, black / Maybe, will be published in spring 2018 by Willow Books. His poems and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in Those People, Rigorous, Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, The New Engagement, Public Pool, Stillwater Review, Gawker, Barrelhouse, Tuesday; An Art Project, The Acentos Review, Lunch Ticket, and many others. He is founder of the cooperative press Get Fresh Books, LLC. A native New Yorker, Roberto holds an MFA in Poetry and Poetry in Translation from Drew University, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
DERRICK HARRIELL, WINNER OF THE MISSISSIPPI INSTITUTE OF ARTS & LETTERS POETRY AWARD
Our authors maintain the highest standards for literary excellence. The majority of our authors are in high demand around the country for readings, writers-in-residence programs, and university teaching. Congrats to Reginald Flood, National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, and Alan King, PEN/Faulkner Fellow.
Our popular line of books can be purchased directly in our SHOPIFY STORE
TOP RELEASES
CONGRATS to Derrick Harriell and ROPES–SPD Bestseller!
Willow Books LitFest—Annual All-Star reading featuring Willow poets and writers.
Appearances: The Smithsonian; Library of Congress; Weeksville Historical Society; Willow Authors on Tour (nationwide); Furious Flower Conference, Busboys & Poets; James Madison University; George Mason University; Associated Writing Programs (AWP); Midwest Modern Language Association (MMLA); Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature (SSML)/Michigan State University; PEN/Faulkner Writers in Schools: Split This Rock; Poets House; Pratt Women of Color collection; University of New Haven Reading Series; Winter Wheat Festival, Grand Valley State U. (w/Aquarius Press); Carr Center, Detroit; Annual LitFest (nationwide) Cave Canem/Willow Books New York Reading; Thurgood Marshall Ctr. for Service & Heritage, Washington, D.C.; Idlewild Writers Conference (w/Aquarius Press)
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