Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (suggested donation $40).
Step 2: Register for “MUSE: A Chapbook Launch and Reading” here.
Join Kelsey L. Smoot for a launch and reading of their new chapbook, MUSE—a collection of poems that invoke both “muses” and “musing,” about the people Kelsey loves, reveres, and reviles, poems that are decidedly southern, melancholic, and together comprise a discordant freedom song. Kelsey will be joined by fellow poets and performers Muhammad Khaerisman, Kiera “Ashlee Haze” Nelson, Nadia Said, and Paula Turcotte.
Kelsey L. Smoot (They/Them/He/Him) is a poet, advocate, frequent writer of critical analysis as well as a full-time PhD student in the interdisciplinary social sciences and humanities. They are the winner of the 2021 Sad Girls Club Literary Contest, the 2023 The Good Life Review Honeybee Prize, the Grand Prize Winner of the 2024 Button Poetry Video Contest, a Pushcart Prize nominee, a Best of the Net nominee, as well as the author of a chapbook titled WE WAS BOIS TOGETHER (Mouthfeel Press).
Muhammad Khaerisman (he/him) is a Muslim Indonesian-born, Alief, Houston-raised poet, actor and multidisciplinary storyteller. Co-Founder of FACES, an artist network and creative incubator for visionary performance and visual arts, Khaerisman travels the world building communities and collaborations.
Kiera “Ashlee Haze” Nelson (she/her) is a poet and spoken word artist from Atlanta by way of Chicago. She has been a part of the Atlanta Poetry circuit for over a decade and has been writing for over 15 years. Her sophomore book SMOKE was released in 2020.
Nadia Said is a Palestinian poet living in the diaspora. She will be published in the upcoming poetry anthology Heaven Looks Like Us: Palestinian Poetry (Haymarket Books, 2025) and Sapiens Magazine
Paula Turcotte lives in Moh'kins'stis (colonially known as Calgary, Alberta). She is the author of the chapbook Permutations (Baseline Press, 2024). Paula serves as a poetry editor at MAYDAY, where she first had the pleasure of reading Kelsey's work.