Reading & Book Launch: Tropical Sacrifice

Registration is highly encouraged as space is limited

Join Lucas de Lima for an evening of readings and performances to celebrate the launch of their new book TROPICAL SACRIFICE (Birds, LLC) with friends Ana Božičević, Catherine Chen and Levani. The book will be available at the launch party at a discounted price. This reading and book launch is presented on the occasion of imago of a queer artist* and is co-presented by Artists Alliance and Birds, LLC.

About Tropical Sacrifice

Tropical Sacrifice is a wishbone against a fascist heart/a prophetic, dream-filled narrative based on the spiritual journey of a chicken. Used for sacrificial ritual in Afro-Brazilian religion, the chicken becomes a re-enchantment of the poet’s ancestry. Her superior vision gives access to histories of genocide and ecocide, opening a portal to Indigenous, Afro-diasporic, queer and nonhuman worlds. From the favela to the Amazon to the astral plane, it is the half-winged bird who escapes the factory farm, inviting voices to bleed out of the sky.

Poets & Artists

Lucas de Lima is a Brazilian-born poet, artist, scholar, and educator. They are the author of Wet Land (Action Books 2014) and Tropical Sacrifice (Birds LLC 2022) as well as multiple chapbooks. A recipient of grants and fellowships from the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Canada Council for the Arts, they hold a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. de Lima lives in New York City and teaches at Mount Holyoke College.

Ana Božičević grew up in Zadar, Croatia before coming to Brooklyn, New York. Ana is a poet, translator, teacher, and occasional singer. She is the author of Povratak lišća / Return of the Leaves, Selected Poems in Croatian (Hrvatsko Društvo Pisaca/Croatian Writers Society, 2020); Joy of Missing Out (Birds, LLC, 2017); the Lambda Award-winning Rise in the Fall (Birds, LLC, 2013), and Stars of the Night Commute (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2009). Her newest book New Life (Wave Books, 2023) will be out this spring. You can find more of her work at www.anabozicevic.com.

Catherine Chen is a multidisciplinary poet and author of the forthcoming full-length collection Beautiful Machine Woman Language (Noemi Press, 2023). Their practice activates a kind of architectural writing exploring the ways they inhabit rituals of mourning, desire, and postcolonial identity making. Their work has appeared in The Rumpus, Apogee, Hyperallergic, Nat.Brut, among others. A Lambda Literary and Poets House fellow, they have received fellowships from Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Theater Mitu, and Monson Arts Center.

Levani is a Georgian-born transdisciplinary artist creating immersive installations rooted in queer ecology and spirituality. They hold an MFA from IUNA Buenos Aires and a BFA from the Tbilisi Academy of Arts. Levani has exhibited extensively at venues and institutions such as Artists Alliance Inc., Georgian National Museum, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Tbilisi Kunsthalle, Socrates Sculpture Park, the Beijing Biennial, and the BRIC Biennial, among others. Their work has been featured in Frieze, Art in America, The Brooklyn Rail, BOMB, ArtAsia Pacific, Art Papers, HYPERALLERGIC, and more.