Join the reading and celebration of COINING A WISHING TOWER, a poetic epic about death, grief, and the afterlife from Ayesha Raees, poet and assistant poetry editor at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. Also featuring a reading and conversation with Philly-author noam keim, author of THE LAND IS HOLY.
Advance registration appreciated.
About Coining a Wishing Tower
Coining a Wishing Tower is a meditation on death and the afterlife — and the irresistible pull between the two.
“In the end, living is dying many times in one singular life,” writes Ayesha Raees, inviting you to consider the departures that make up one lifetime. The splintering of a voice from domestic life, the defiance of wisdom leaving childhood behind, the egress from one’s country of birth, and the non-permanence of life and inanimate objects become the rich pasture for the hybrid epic poems in this collection.
"Ayesha Raees’s Coining a Wishing Tower is everything I hope to find when I read a book of poetry—fearless reckoning with unprecedented experience spoken in a singular, deeply and importantly strange lyric voice.”— Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!
Ayesha Raees عائشہ رئیس is a poet and artist identifying as a hybrid creating hybrid poetry through hybrid forms. Her work strongly revolves around issues of race and identity, belonging and dislocation, G/god and beauty while possessing a strong agency for decolonial, anti-violence, and anti-erasure practices. She edits poetry at The Margins and has received endorsements from Asian American Writers Workshop, Kundiman, Brooklyn Poets, UNESCO, Millay Colony For The Arts and elsewhere. Her work has been published extensively, including Poetry Northwest, Pleiades, The Nation, Poets.org and others. Her first book of poems Coining A Wishing Tower won the Broken River Prize and was published by Radix Media in 2024. She is based in New York City and Lahore, Pakistan (and many other unsettled spaces). Follow them at @skunkbabepoet.
noam keim (they/them) is a trauma worker, medicine maker and flâneur freak. Their non-fiction writing weaves themes close to their heart: reverence to the land, healing, queerness, colonialism, plants, abolition. They are a Lambda Literary ’22 Fellow, an RWW ’23 Fellow, a Tin House ’23 Fellow, a Sewanee ’23 contributor and a Periplus ’23 Fellow mentored by Grace Talusan. Their debut essay collection, THE LAND IS HOLY, was published by Radix in 2024. Connect on Twitter and IG: thelandisholy or thelandisholy.com.
Coining a Wishing Towerwas published by worker-owned, independent publisher Radix.