WE HAVE NAMES: Reclaiming Black Bodies

WE HAVE NAMES: Reclaiming Black Bodies

Saturday, June 14th at 6PM – 8PM on Zoom

This reading hosted by UCF MFA Creative Writing alum Audi Barnes seeks to de-center the white experience and honor the lives of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Ahmaud Arbery by amplifying the voices of Black creatives past, present, and future from the UCF Creative Writing MFA program. The event will feature work from the poets, authors, and essayists the UCF CRW MFA has fostered throughout the years. WE HAVE NAMES: Reclaiming Black Bodies is open to students, faculty, staff, and alumni of all backgrounds from the UCF community, and we encourage you to join us.

This recorded event will feature original works read by Black UCF MFA CRW alumni and prospective students, with supplementary readings by non-Black students from work by Black creatives published in the last ten years. Each reader will have seven minutes to read. You must use this link to register to view this password-protected event. If you are a UCF MFA CRW alum or prospective student, you may use that link to sign up to read as well. The event will be recorded, and readers will have the option to be featured on Working Title Podcast. Though the entire event will be recorded, anyone who does not wish to being featured on WTP will have their footage destroyed after it is edited.

Throughout the reading, we will provide you with links to organizations where you can provide donations, local Black businesses and restaurants to support, as well as resources to help you better understand how to de-center whiteness in order to better support the Black community. We ask you to consider making a donation to an organization like the NAACP, ACLU, Reclaim the Block, Black Lives Matter, or other organizations that work towards reforming institutions like voting, criminal justice, and privatized prisons which oppress Black communities to a greater degree than others. Please note that bail funds, Kickstarters, and goFundMe’s help members of the Black community more immediately and more directly than larger organizations, but that Kickstarters and GoFundMe’s in particular should be carefully vetted.