Join CBAW for Glowing in the Dark, our annual winter solstice reading.

Hosted by Hari Alluri and Seema Reza, featuring readings from writers whose work sustains us, helps us to balance the light and darkness in both bright and difficult times.

Featuring readings by…

• Jay Anderson
• Anne Barlieb
• Aaron Caycedo-Kimura
• Diana Colón
• Teri Ellen Cross Davis
• LaQuantae
• Maya Marshall
• Diana Osborn
• Rick Writes
• SheDragon713

Please bring a candle to light with us and stay after the reading for our Visual Art Program with Veteran and Artist, Shaun Smith. Bring your medium of choice to learn how to paint a flame.

About Our Readers

Jay Anderson is a dedicated and multifaceted retired Army veteran, having honorably served over 31 years as a Special Forces Warrant Officer. Jay also worked as a Special Agent with the United States Capitol Police for 18 years and as a Senior Cybersecurity Tech II Ops Analyst for RTX. Beyond his military and civilian careers, Jay channels his passion into various creative and purposeful pursuits, including art, creative writing, and playing guitar. A committed volunteer with Warrior Ethos, Jay assists transitioning servicemembers in finding rewarding careers in Information Technology and Cybersecurity.
In addition to supporting veterans, Jay is a certified fitness trainer and financial wellness coach. He empowers individuals of all ages through retirement planning, life and health insurance guidance, and education on annuities. His financial coaching also includes tailored head-start programs for children aiming for college, helping families prepare for a secure future. Jay’s dedication to service, wellness, and education makes him a valuable resource and mentor in his community.

Anne Barlieb in a six-word bio = Iconic masterpiece, unfinished; batteries not included.

Aaron Caycedo-Kimura is a writer, visual artist, and teacher. He is the author of two poetry books: the full-length collection Common Grace (Beacon Press, 2022) and Ubasute, winner of the 2020 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition. He is also the author and illustrator of the nonfiction book Text, Don’t Call: An Illustrated Guide to the Introverted Life (TarcherPerigee, 2017). His honors include a MacDowell Stanford Calderwood Fellowship, a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship in Poetry, and a St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award in Literature. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals and anthologies, including Beloit Poetry Journal, The Cincinnati Review, Shenandoah, RHINO, Salamander, Cave Wall, Consequence, and elsewhere. Caycedo-Kimura earned his MFA from Boston University and teaches creative writing at Trinity College.

Diana Colón – Bio forthcoming.

Teri Ellen Cross Davis is the author of a more perfect Union, winner of the 2019 Journal/Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize and finalist for the 2022 Hurston Wright Legacy Award in Poetry. Her first collection, Haint, won the 2017 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. She is the recipient of a 2022 Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award and the Poetry Society of America’s Robert H. Winner Memorial Award. She has received grants from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and The Freya Project and been awarded fellowships and scholarships to Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, the Community of Writers Poetry Workshop and others. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies. She was the 2019-2020 HoCoPoLitSo Writer-in-Residence for Howard County, Maryland, and is the O.B. Hardison Poetry Series Curator and Poetry Programs manager for the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C.

LaQuantae is an unapologetically Black decolonial educator, writer, poet, and body trust yoga instructor. Reading and writing have always been her sanctuary, but it’s through poetry that she finds her truest form of expression. Her work reflects personal and universal themes of love, loss, pain, healing, and the pursuit of belonging, serving as both a mirror and window into her life. A mother of three, LaQuantae is indigenous to the unceded land of the Duwamish and Suquamish peoples but now resides on the unceded territories of the Patwin peoples, where she longs for the rain, eats Asiago cheese bagels, and cherishes authentic human interactions.

Maya Marshall, a poet, essayist, and editor, is the 2024 Winner of the Holmes National Poetry Prize and the author of All the Blood Involved in Love (2022). She is a MacDowell and Cave Canem fellow. Marshall cofounded underbelly, the journal on the practical magic of poetic revision. Her writing has been published in Prose for the People (Penguin, 2025), the American Poetry Review, and Prairie Schooner. Marshall is the poetry director and an editor at Haymarket Books. She publishes writers who work at the intersection of art and politics and who are guided by a mission of justice and liberation.

Diana Osborn is living in Vermont while plotting the next long distance hike. She’s an almost retired paramedic who writes poems and makes art, especially quilts and watercolor paintings. She has always had super diverse interests and careers. Her driving goal is to do everything a little bit rather than one thing really well. She exists by being a “both, and” person: both introvert and extrovert, both teacher and student, both seeking peace in outdoor adventures and energy through indoor creative pursuits. Her first job was environmental educator in the DC area and the last was cruise ship paramedic in the Caribbean. Diana came to CBAW during the pandemic, grateful for the live-saving opportunity to hang out, write, make art, and mostly, connect, with people who are both nothing like her and very, very similar.

Rick Writes is a first generation Mexican American who is Influenced from his life spanning the east coast. An Air Force Veteran of 11 years, he has certifications in facilitation, instruction, workplace efficiency & is a certified assistant in program management. His poetry is formed by hard work, camaraderie, and passion for life, he hopes the scriptures he paints can leave a good image for his son. Rick has performed in Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Washington, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and South Korea. A regional finalist both as an individual and on a team, Rick hopes that his mantra of “Universally Personally” will be a staple within the poetry community for years to come.

SheDragon713— Write some. Read lots. Create things with my hands. Proud Vietnamese mother of a blossoming trans girl and a sardonic boy.

About Our Hosts

Hari Alluri (he/him/siya) is author of The Flayed City (Kaya Press) and chapbooks The Promise of Rust (Mouthfeel Press) and Our Echo of Sudden Mercy (Next Page Press). He is co-editor of We Were Not Alone (Community Building Art Works) and co-founding editor at Locked Horn Press. Recipient of the Vera Manuel Prize for Poetry, siya has received grants, fellowships, and residencies from the BC Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, The Capilano Review, Deer Lake, Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, and others. His work appears through these venues and elsewhere: AALR, Apogee, Four Way Review, Marías at Sampaguitas, Poetry, ti-TCR, and—via Split This Rock—Best of the Net 2022. @harialluri | https://linktr.ee/harialluri

Seema Reza is the author of A Constellation of Half-Lives & When the World Breaks Open. Her writing has appeared in print and on-line in McSweeney’s, The Washington Post, The Feminist Wire, Bellevue Literary Review, The Offing, Full Grown People, and The Nervous Breakdown among others, and has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has taught poetry in classrooms, jails, hospitals, and universities, and has performed across the country at universities, theaters, festivals, bookstores, conferences, & one fine mattress shop.1

Shaun Smith is a Retired U.S. Army Veteran and Fine Artist based in Northern Maine. Shaun served 10 years as a Combat Medic with a tour in Afghanistan. During that time he was awarded The Combat Medic Badge for providing care under fire and a Purple Heart for injuries sustained from a VBIED. Shaun found comfort in art therapy as a way to express his experiences, leading him to enroll into an art university. Shaun graduated from The Academy of Art University of San Francisco with a bachelor’s in fine art painting in 2021. Shaun dedicates his time to painting landscapes, wildlife, and peaceful moments.

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