Julian Randall at City of Asylum

Breakout works often gain attention for the way they challenge and confuse people’s expectations — Julian Randall’s debut poetry collection is a clear-cut example. Randall will read from Refuse, winner of the prestigious Cave Canem Poetry Prize in 2018, at a program hosted by City of Asylum at Alphabet City. His groundbreaking work examines his identity as a Black, biracial, queer man and challenges the binaries and boundaries meant to restrict him. The program will also feature a reading by Sherrika Mitchell of the Pittsburgh Poetry Collective.