The Writer’s Center presents a virtual edition of our Through a Literary Lens series for Women’s History Month. Special guest moderator Shanon Lee leads a discussion on the subject of feminism in literature and popular culture with Zeba Blay, followed by a panel with acclaimed authors Monica Prince, Khalisa Rae, and Kelly Wilz, PhD. Through a Literary Lens is co-sponsored by Poet Lore, America’s oldest poetry journal.
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About the Panelists
Zeba Blay is a culture and film critic born in Ghana and based in NYC. The Senior Culture Writer at HuffPost, her words have also appeared in Film Comment, ESSENCE, The New York Times, Shadow and Act, The Village Voice, and Indiewire. Her forthcoming book, Carefree Black Girls, comes out October 2021 from St. Martin’s Press.
Shanon Lee is a contributor for Forbes and The Lily, published by The Washington Post. Her byline appears in publications including Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Marie Claire, Playboy, Redbook, Women’s Health and Parents Magazine. Her opinion essays on misogyny and racism are widely circulated, and have been shared by notables including bestselling author J.K. Rowling, rap legend MC Lyte and political activist Kevin Powell. Shanon is an alumna of the 2019 Women’s Media Center Progressive Women’s Voices program and a mentor-editor for The OpEd Project. She was named to The Tempest’s 40 Women To Watch 2019 list for advancing the dialogue around gender-based violence. She is represented by Agnes Carlowicz of the Carol Mann Agency and is currently working on a book about misogynoir in pop culture.
Monica Prince teaches activist and performance writing at Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania. She is the author of How to Exterminate the Black Woman: A Choreopoem ([PANK], 2020), Instructions for Temporary Survival (Red Mountain Press, 2019), and Letters from the Other Woman (Grey Book Press, 2018). She is the managing editor of the Santa Fe Writers Project Quarterly, and the co-author of the suffrage play, A Pageant of Agitating Women, with Anna Andes. Her work appears in The Rumpus, trampset, Artemis, The Texas Review, MadCap Review, American Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. Follow her on her website, monicaprince.com.
Khalisa Rae is a poet, activist, and journalist in Durham, NC with her hubby and baby kitten. She is the author of Real Girls Have Real Problems chapbook. Her poetry can be seen in Frontier, Rust and Moth, Damaged Goods, Hellebore, Flypaper, Sundog Lit, PANK, Luna Luna, Tishman Review, Occulum, All Female Menu, the Obsidian, among others. She is the winner of the Bright Wings Poetry contest, the Furious Flower Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize, the White Stag Publishing Contest, among others. Currently, she serves as founder of Think and Ink BIPOC Collective and the Women of Color Speak Reading series and the Writing Center Director at Shaw University. Her debut collections, Ghost in a Black Girls Throat are forthcoming from Red Hen Press in April 2021 and White Stag Publishing January 2022.
Kelly Wilz, PhD is a Professor of Communication and Media Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. Her research focuses on the intersection of media, gender, politics, critical race theory, and popular culture. She is the author of the book, Resisting Rape Culture Through Pop Culture: Sex After #MeToo. Get the book on Amazon or directly from the publisher.