Skilled in writing Art, Culture, Fashion, Music, and Literature.
Ekphrasis Review on Dior Fall 2023 Show
An ekphrasis review poem on the Dior Fall 2023 show
50 Shades of Camo – White Mountaineering Fall 2015 Menswear
White Mountaineering, by Japanese designer, Yosuke Aizawa gives an outdoor camping meets streetwear feel. Especially with patterns ranging from geometric, floral, and owl inspired camo.
South DeKalb’s Trash Talk
The county’s backlog of code violations is well documented. But residents and county officials disagree over who’s actually responsible for these eyesores.
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Photos by Matt Pearson | Research by Naya Clark, West End Fellow
How we reported this story:
This story was produced in partnership with WABE. DorMiya Vance, one of the reporters on this story, is a Report for America Fellow covering metro Atlanta’s southside communities, including South DeKalb.
Canopy Atlanta asked over 50 South DeKalb ...
“When is a Body Not a Body?”: an interview with Rone Shavers
INTERVIEW BY NAYA CLARK
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Silverfish, by Rone Shavers is an experimental novel that details a slice of life in the dystopian Incorporated States of America: a country much like our own, but one in which the corporatization of culture results in the commodification of human bodies. The central characters are Angel, a code-switching, artificial intelligence robot, and Clayton, a human “combat associate” whose job is to hunt, kill, and capitalize on “primitives,” those unaccounted-for humans who...
A$AP TYY
A$AP TyY, one of Harlem’s A$AP Mob members and a Bike Life pioneer, is known for his style and his affinity for gliding around the city on motorcycles, four-wheelers and dirt bikes. As a part of the collective, he has released new music, merch and collaborations this year. The man behind recent releases “100 Rounds,” “Who Ain’t With Me” and “Ting” discusses how his collaborative clothing design, Bike Life and rap lifestyles intersect.
“Bike Life plays a...
Naya Clark on Kim Chinquee’s SNOWDOG, a Ravenna Press flash fiction collection
At the crux of many people living in the humdrum of isolation and taking in stories quickly through social media, the “queen” of flash fiction Kim Chinquee’s new collection SNOWDOG satisfies taking in the brief and wandering details of everyday life.
Seeing the Mom in Pop: A Conversation with M. I. Devine
M. I. DEVINE IS A multidisciplinary writer, lyricist, and performer. An associate professor of English at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, Devine has published widely on an array of topics, his scholarship winning the 2019 Gournay Prize in Creative Nonfiction and support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. His most recent book, Warhol’s Mother’s Pantry: Art, America, and the Mom in Pop, published in November by Mad Creek Books, delves into the life and work of pop-...
What’s at stake for West End’s art scene?
How the neighborhood’s artists are adapting to the COVID-19 era
A Review of Orange by E. Briskin
(Seattle, WA: Entre Ríos Books, 2020)
Orange, by E. Briskin, is a collection of segmented prose about the death of a grieving narrator’s dog. Along with the jolting theme, the form that Orange takes is just as peculiar. The stream-of-conscious narrative is displayed in numerically disordered blocks of thought, many times in the form of observational one-liners. The nameless narrator’s thoughts are consumed by the memories and consciousness (or lack thereof) of their late canine companion. Des...
Review: Erin McGraw's 'Joy' Helps Us Understand Strangers
Erin McGraw’s latest collection, Joy, is a mosaic of 52 short stories that seamlessly and humorously capture the multifaceted bits of everyday life. McGraw’s slice-of-life drop-ins of Americans living within their own bubbles distill the essence of people that are, internally to them, completely logical, yet borderline absurd to those around them.
Among many compilations of suburban everyday life, McGraw’s Joy can be likened to a more literary form of the Netflix series Easy. Like Easy, Joy i...
“Opportunities for curiosity and generosity”: an interview with Peter Ramos
Naya Clark discusses with Peter Ramos his book Poetic Encounters in the Americas: Remarkable Bridge. In Remarkable Bridge Ramos delves into what goes into poetic translations, referencing poets such as James Wright and César Vallejo; Walt Whitman, Pablo Neruda and Langston Hughes; Luis Palés Matos and William Carlos Williams; Elizabeth Bishop and Octavio Paz, and more.
In this interview, Ramos answers questions regarding how language and place literally and figuratively cross boundaries and c...
José Olivarez' "Citizen Illegal" Illuminates the Experiences and Language behind Migration
Over a year ago I reviewed poet, José Olivarez' "Citizen Illegal", a collection of poetry centralizing the experience of immigration from Mexico to L.A. Have a read!
Megan Angelo’s Followers: A World Lonely with the Vanity of Social Media
Followers, a novel by Megan Angelo (Graydon House 2020), is a fictional prediction of a world molded by social media culture. Followers revolves around the lives of Orla Cadden, whose dream is to become a literary success, and Floss, an aspiring celebrity influencer. Told in alternating stories, the novel sees Floss and Orla hack societal prestige through digital connections.
We’re All Fighting: A Conversation with Saeed Jones
In the midst of America’s identity reflecting itself through politics and pop culture, Saeed Jones’s new memoir, How We Fight for Our Lives, illustrates an experience of American life that is rarely talked about yet commonly lived. The book focuses the life of a queer Black boy from the South, and how the lack of conversation in America shaped the experiences of his youth, personal development, education, and sexuality into a battle of survival.