Villainy
*Of interest to performance studies, performance artists, arab american community, queer / trans community, gender studies, leftists, anarchists, abolitionists, scholars, activists, freaks, hedonists, rebels, revolutionaries
*poems were written through the grief of post-Ghostship Fire and post-Muslim ban
*Author’s first book EXTRATRANSMISSION was a finalist for a Lamda Literary award in Transgender Poetry
*Author participates in many abolitionist projects, including Books Through Bars NYC / Black & Pink NYC & SF Bay Area
*Author curated the Segue Reading Series in October-November of 2019
*Author co-found, taught, and mentored at Words of Resistance, a monthly radical queer open floor poetry night to fundraise for political prisoners’ comissary funds, from 2012-2017
*Author founded and directs POETICS OF TERROR, a workshop series
*Author has previously been the Director of Publicity at Nightboat Books (2017-2019), and worked in Publicity & Communications, Events & Development for Timeless, Infinite Light (2016-2018) and Publicity & Communications and Social Media for Commune Editions (2014-2016)
*Author holds an MFA in Poetry w/ Community Engagement Scholarship from Mills College and was the recipient of the Zora Neale Hurston full scholarship to Naropa’s Summer Writing Program in 2018
*Author is the current Communications & Development coordinator at Poetry Project
Andrea Abi-Karam is an arab-american genderqueer punk poet-performer cyborg, writing on the art of killing bros, the intricacies of cyborg bodies, trauma and delayed healing. Selected by Bhanu Khapil, Andrea’s debut EXTRATRANSMISSION (Kelsey Street Press, 2019), is a poetic critique of the U.S. military’s role in the War on Terror. Simone White selected their second assemblage, Villainy for publication in Fall 2021 at Nightboat Books. With Kay Gabriel, they co-edited We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics released by Nightboat Books in November 2020. They are a Leo currently obsessed with queer terror and convertibles.
