Sick & Disabled Showcase Virtual Poetry Reading

Gather with Split This Rock and Kay Ulanday Barrett for the Sick & Disabled Showcase, a poetry reading featuring Arianna Monet, Ina Cariño, MT Vallarta,  Amir McClam, Tala Khanmalek, and Joselia Hughes. Scroll down to learn more about the incredible lineup of readers! The reading will take place virtually on Thursday, February 5, 2026, 6:30-8 pm EST. Tickets are offered on a sliding scale and start at $5. ACCESSIBILITYAccessibility is a core value for Split This Rock. We strive to provide programs, materials, and communications that allow people within the disability community to engage fully. On-screen ASL interpretation, Zoom auto-captions, and a document formatted for screen readers with poet bios & poem text will be provided. Let us know of any accessibility questions or accommodation requests when purchasing tickets or by emailing info@splitthisrock.org with "ACCESS REQUEST" in the subject line by Thursday, January 22nd. Given our ongoing funding challenges, we cannot promise accessibility services, but will do our best to provide accommodations.ABOUT THE HOST & CURATORKAY ULANDAY BARRETT is a poet, essayist, cultural strategist, and A+ Napper. They are a 2024-2025 Disabled Futures Fellow awarded by The Ford Foundation and United States Artists. He is a recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Cy Twombly Award for Poetry. They have attended residences at Tin House, Millay Arts, Baldwin for the Arts, Lambda Literary, Macondo, and was a James Baldwin fellow at MacDowell. Their work has been published by The New York Times, Lit Hub, The Rumpus, Vogue, Brevity, and more. Their book More Than Organs (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020) is a Stonewall Honor Book and a Lambda Literary Award Finalist.ABOUT THE POETSAmir McClam (they/them) is a poet-educator, clay worker, and spiritualist from Buffalo, New York. Their work explores Black queer and trans feminisms, creative embodiment, and the personal and relational healing that sows the seeds for social transformation. Amir is a 2025 Lambda Literary Fellow and has been awarded additional fellowships and scholarships from the Schomburg Center and the Folger Shakespeare Library. Amir's poems can be found in Nimrod International Journal and The Amistad. They hold an MFA in Creative Writing from Cornell University and BS in Psychology from Howard University. They teach writing independently and at Cornell.MT Vallarta (they/them) is a queer, non-binary, disabled poet and Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. They are the author of the poetry collection, What You Refuse to Remember, winner of the 2022 Small Harbor Publishing Laureate Prize. They have received fellowships from Lambda Literary, Kundíman, and Abode Press, while their creative writing and scholarship is published and forthcoming in Psaltery and Lyre, The Selkie, Shō, Amerasia Journal, The Asian American Literary Review, and others. They live on Northern Chumash lands, in Santa Maria, CA.Ina Cariño is a 2022 Whiting Award winner for poetry originally from Baguio City in the Philippines. Their work appears in the American Poetry Review, the Margins, Guernica, Poetry Northwest, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review Daily, New England Review, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the 2021 Alice James Award for Feast, published by Alice James Books in March 2023. Their forthcoming collection Reverse Requiem is slated for publication in April 2026 (Alice James Books). In 2019, Ina founded a poetry reading series called Indigena Collective, a platform aiming to center marginalized creatives in the NC community and beyond.Arianna Monet (she/they) is a queer Black poet and strawberry ice cream enthusiast from eastern Massachusetts.  In the wake of a disabling event with a restructuring effect on her cognition, much of her artistic practice is concerned with the capacity of poetic form to function as a kind of assistive tech. In addition to being a 2022 Zoeglossia Fellow, Arianna is a 2023 Lambda Literary Fellow and was a member of the 2019 Boston Poetry Slam Team. Their work can be found with Button Poetry, the Academy of American Poets, and elsewhere. Joselia Hughes is a writer and artist based in New York. Joselia is visual arts teaching faculty at Lincoln Center Education. Joselia’s poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net. Her writing has been published in Apogee Journal, Massachusetts Review, The Poetry Project, Split This Rock's The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database, Blackflash Magazine, and elsewhere. She is currently pursuing an MFA in writing at the Milton Avery Graduate School of Art at Bard College.Tala Khanmalek | mecca monarch (all pronouns) is a queer, disabled, Iranian writer, editor, and scholar. Their poetry has appeared in Split This Rock's beloved Poem of the Week Series for which they also served as a First Reader.ABOUT SPLIT THIS ROCKSplit This Rock is the only national organization with a mission to integrate poetry and social justice. We materially support poets who are often excluded and underrepresented in the literary landscape, particularly those who are BIPOC, LGBTQ, disabled or chronically ill, and/or working class. With strong commitments to racial, gender, economic, and disability justice, we work to expand the horizons of inclusion and assert the transformative power of language to bear witness to injustice and provoke social change. We believe poetry acts as an agent for change by revealing the diversity and complexity of human experience, reflecting on daily lives and struggles, considering personal and social responsibility, and envisioning a better world. Learn more at Split This Rock's website.