Jackie Trimble Book Signing | Film Premiere | Reception

Jacqueline Allen Trimble is a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow (Poetry), a Cave Canem Fellow, and an Alabama State Council on the Arts Literary Fellow. Her first collection, AMERICAN HAPPINESS, won the Balcones Poetry Prize. 

HOW TO SURVIVE THE APOCALYPSE explores the idea that African Americans have weathered many apocalypses and advises those who wish to avoid the annihilation that awaits them to “live by rage and joy and turpentine.” Sometimes funny, often ironic, and always biting in its commentary, the poems move from joy to pain to rage and back to joy, connecting history to the contemporary moment, and exploring what and how human beings, African Americans in particular, have survived.

The launch will include the premiere of “The Language of Joy,” a film by director Ouida Washington, a short reading by the author, and a discussion of the book with scholar Denise Davis-Maye and Alabama Poet Laureate Ashley M. Jones. Reception and book signing to follow.