Lara Atallah reads from her new collection of poetry. Also featured are Philly-based authors noam keim and Alex DiFrancesco. Doors open at 6:30pm and the event begins at 7 in our upstairs reading room.

Exit signs on a seaside highway contemplates fragmented territory set against the backdrop of an ongoing apocalypse. The poems both acknowledge the raw violence created by borders, while stubbornly searching for glimpses of a better world that lies within reach. With language that is confrontational but also hopeful, it invites us to liberate ourselves from structures that are far more fragile than we believe them to be.

Lara Atallah is a multidisciplinary artist and writer. Her practice explores the political dimensions of landscape, probing both the futility and fluidity of borders as manmade constructs. Her work has been exhibited in the US and internationally and is part of the NYU Langone Collection and the Met Museum, among others.

noam keim (they/them) is a trauma worker, medicine maker and flâneur. They were born a settler of Occupied Palestine in an Arab Jewish family hailing from Morocco before moving to France as a baby. noam now lives on stolen Lenni-Lenape land (known as Philadelphia, USA) where they build webs of support for individuals impacted by carceral systems. Their non-fiction writing weaves themes close to their heart: reverence to the land, healing, queerness, colonialism, plants, abolition. Their essay collection The Land is Holy won the 2022 Megaphone Prize and will be published in 2024 by Radix Media.

Alex DiFrancesco is a multi-genre writer and transmasc person (they/them) who is the author of Transmutation, All City, and Psychopomps. Their work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Tin House, Pacific Standard, Eater, Brevity, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and more. They are the recipient of grants and fellowships from PEN America, Sundress Academy for the Arts, and the winner of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for 2022.