Red Emma’s

In these escalating, turbulent times, let us turn to literature, to notes of solidarity, poetics of shared anger, calls to revolution. At AWP this year, we seek inspiration from the grassroots movements for radical justice and social equality that have sustained progressive ideas in Baltimore for decades, to curate this offsite reading. At Radical Reads, some incredible contemporary writers come together to share excerpts of writing, their own or of writers they admire, that can show us the way.

In turn, we hope to share with you the radical ethos that informs our publisher and print shop. We will also have some political posters for you to take!

Featuring Readers:  Chris Gonzalez I. S. Jones noam keim Preeti Vangani Sarah Aziza Zein El-Amine Zefyr Lisowski

Christopher Gonzalez (he/him) is a queer Puerto Rican writer. He is the author of the story collection I’m Not Hungry but I Could Eat (SFWP, 2021). He was a 2021 NYFA/NYSCA Artist Fellow in Fiction and the 2025 recipient of VCCA’s Steven Petrow and Julie Petrow-Cohen LGBTQ+ Fellowship. His short stories appear or are forthcoming in journals like epiphany, Short Story Long, 7x7, Best Microfictions, and Best Small Fictions, among others. He currently works in book publishing, serves as a fiction editor for Barrelhouse magazine, and lurks most places online under the handle @livesinpages.

I.S. Jones is the author of Bloodmercy, chosen by Nicole Sealey as the winner of the 2025 APR / Honickman First Book Prize and the chapbook Spells of My Name, selected by Newfound in 2021 for their Emerging Writers Series.  Currently, she is a Senior Editor for Poetry Northwest, where she runs her column, The Legacy Suite, a three-part interview documenting the journey of writers publishing their debut poetry collections. Alongside the poet Yazud Brito-Milian, she founded Canto-Kojo, a featured reading series and open mic at Call and Response Books, a Black woman-owned bookstore on the southside of Chicago. Her works have appeared in Granta, LA Review of Books, Guernica, Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. In 2025, The New York Times Review of Books named Bloodmercy one of the Best Poetry Books of 2025. While she has lived in many places across the U.S., she is blessed to call Chicago home.

noam keim (they/them) is a trauma worker, medicine maker and flâneur freak living between unceded Lenape land (Philadelphia) and their ancestral homeland of Morocco. Their first essay collection, The Land is Holy won the Evelyn Shakir Best Arab-American non-fiction award  2025 and the Foreword indies Bronze 2024. noam’s writing has been supported by Lambda Literary, Tin House, Sewanee and Roots.Wounds.Words, Periplus, and they have been awarded residencies by Space A Kathmandu, Pocoapoco Oaxaca, Nawat Fes amongst others. Their work can be found in The Michigan Quarterly Review, ALOCASIA, The Massachusetts Review, The Kenyon Review and others. Connect on IG: noamkeim or noamkeim.com.

Preeti Vangani is a poet & writer from Bombay based in San Francisco. She is the author of the poetry collections, Mother Tongue Apologize (2019) and Fifty Mothers (River River Books, 2026). Her work has appeared in AGNI, The Georgia Review, Gulf Coast, Prairie Schooner among other places. Her debut short story won the 2021 Pen/Dau Emerging Writers Prize. Vangani has been a resident at UCross, Djerassi and Ragdale. She has received artist grants from San Francisco Arts Commission, YBCA, and The Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. She holds an MFA in Writing from University of San Francisco and teaches in the program.

Sarah Aziza (she/هي ) is a Palestinian American writer, translator, and artist with roots in ‘Ibdis and Deir al-Balah, Gaza. She is the author of the genre-bending memoir The Hollow Half, winner of the Palestine Book Award and named a Most Anticipated and Best Book of the Year by Vulture, Vanity Fair, Literary Hub, Elle, Electric Literature, Mizna, and The San Francisco Chronicle, among others. Sarah’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Best American Essays, The Baffler, Harper’s, Mizna, The Guardian, and The Nation, among other publications, as well as in numerous translations. She is the recipient of fellowships and support from Fulbright, MacDowell, USA Artists, the Asian American Writers Workshop, Tin House Writers’ Workshop, and the Pulitzer Center, among others. Sarah now resides in the U.S. on occupied Munsee Lenape and Canarsie land and is struggling, daily, toward a free Palestine.

Zein El-Amine is a Lebanese-American poet and writer. He has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Maryland. His poems and short stories have appeared in Lit Hub, Electric Literature, Plume, Wild River Review, Uno Mas, Middle East Report, Split This Rock, DC Poets Against the War: An Anthology, We Call to the Eye & the Night: Love Poems by Writers of Arab Heritage, and elsewhere. El-Amine was awarded the Megaphone Prize by Radix Co-op for his collection of short stories, Is This How You Eat A Watermelon?. The book was nominated for the PEN/ROBERT W. BINGHAM PRIZE for debut short story collection. El-Amine lives in Washington, D.C., and teaches global literature and Arab World Studies at American University and Georgetown University.

Zefyr Lisowski is the author of the essay collection Uncanny Valley Girls (Harper Perennial 2025). She’s also the author of two poetry collections, Girl Work (Noemi Press 2024), winner of the 2025 Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Poetry, and Blood Box (Black Lawrence 2019). She lives in Brooklyn and at zefyrlisowski.com.