Monica Hand reads in St. Louis

Monica Hand reading

 At one point during the reading hosted by Treasure Redmond Friday night, Monica Hand walked to the podium and read from her book, me and nina. When Hand held up her book at one point, one of the folks in my crew, Cindy Lyles, leaned over to me and said, "hey, don't we know her? Don't we know that book?"

 "Yep," I said, "that's the Nina Simone book."

"That's it," said Cindy. That's it.

Hand's book is one of many volumes by Cave Canem poets that we have in our office. We're constantly talking and passing books around, and Hand's book has come up on a few different occasions, especially when we're discussing poets who concentrate on black history or major cultural figures.

Cindy and I were pleased to catch the author of me and nina live in a reading with her Cave Canem peers. We now had the poet to go with the book.

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• Treasure Redmond hosts poetry reading in St. Louis