DC Launch of Zein El-Amine's IS THIS HOW YOU EAT A WATERMELON?

Saturday, November 12, 2022 6:30 PM to 9:00 PM EST

Radix Media, in partnership with Eaton DC, celebrates the publication of Is This How You Eat a Watermelon? by Lebanese-born poet and writer Zein El-Amine with a special DC launch event.

Zein will be joined by prize-winning poet, fiction writer, and essayist Leeya Mehta. The two writers will share work on transit and movement, and families and communities come asunder from migration. Zein's characters, unmoored by strife in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and America, and Leeya's poems, about the Zoroastrian Parsis in India tracing their roots to Persia, echo the best and worst of humanity in survival. Poet Henry Mills will moderate a conversation between the writers.

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Zein El-Amine is a Lebanese-born poet and writer. He has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Maryland. His poems have appeared in Wild River Review, Folio, Beltway Quarterly, Foreign Policy In Focus, CityLit, Graylit, Split This Rock, Penumbra, DC Poets Against The War: An Anthology, Ghostfishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology. His latest poetry manuscript, A Travel Guide for the Exiled, was recently shortlisted for the Bergman Prize, judged by Louise Glück. His short stories have appeared in Uno Mas, Jadaliyya, Middle East Report, Wild River Review, About Place Journal, and in Bound Off.

Leeya Mehta is a prize-winning poet, short story writer, and essayist. Her poetry collections are The Towers of Silence, and A Story of the World Before the Fence of which Tim Seibles, former Poet Laureate of Virginia, writes, “is a lush, lyrical study of memory and history.” In 2022 her work has been anthologized in the Penguin Book of Modern Indian Poets and in Future Work, an anthology of contemporary Indian writers from Red Hen Press. Leeya writes a popular column on literary life, The Company We Keep, and is an editor with Plume Poetry, where she features poets from Maine to Bombay. She has been a contest judge, serves on the boards of educational and literary organizations, and has been an editor for various journals. You can find more on her work at https://leeyamehta.com/

Henry Mills was born in DC to a Salvadoran mother and a Jewish-American father. His work has appeared in Acentos, Epiphany, and The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States. In 2016 he received an MFA in poetry from New York University.

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Eaton DC: 1201 K Street Northwest Washington, DC 20005