DREAMing Out Loud Annual Public Reading

This event is part of the 2021 PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature. Visit pen.org/festival to learn more and get tickets for other events.

From Kenya to Russia, Malta to Mexico, India to Costa Rica, Slovakia, Brazil, and beyond, our DREAMers will share stories of journeys toward hope, healing, and joy from around the world. They come together as students from DREAMing Out Loud, PEN America’s series of tuition-free writing workshops for emerging migrant writers in the U.S., founded by the award-winning Mexican novelist Álvaro Enrigue in 2016. Bold and brilliant Bronx-raised spoken word artist Danyeli Rodriguez Del Orbe will headline this year’s reading with poems and stories from her own experience as an Afro-Dominican migrant writer and community organizer. Join us to celebrate our newest generation of DREAMers as they give voice to new writing inspired by this extraordinary year. 

For ticket buyers who are not family or friends of students in DREAMing Out Loud, the suggested minimum donation for entry is $5. All proceeds will directly support DREAMing Out Loud, including workshops, our annual anthology, and public readings like this.

This digital event will start at 7:00pm ET / 4:00pm PT. If you have any questions, please visit our FAQs.

DREAMing Out Loud is supported by public funds from the New York City Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME), with special thanks to the Vilcek Foundation.

Presented in collaboration with the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, National Queer Theater, and the Mexican Studies Institute at the City University of New York (CUNY).

Danyeli Rodriguez Del Orbe is a Dominican writer, spoken word performer, and community organizer raised in the Bronx. Her writing focuses on the nuances of Blackness, Latinidad, and migration. Danyeli has been featured by Bronx Museum of Arts, Museum of African Diaspora (MOAD), NPR Latino, and named one of “25 Latinxs Who Made an Impact on Their Communities” by Remezcla. She is the author of the collection of poems periodicos de ayer, and the recipient of the Define American Artist Fellowship and Define American Artist Grant for an upcoming film project highlighting migration narratives of Black Dominicans. She currently lives in Los Angeles and spends most days caring for her plants.  

ABOUT NUYORICAN POETS CAFE

Since 1973, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe has served as a home for groundbreaking works of poetry, spoken word, music, theater and visual arts. A multicultural, multi-arts institution, the Cafe champions the use of spoken word and poetry to empower Latinx, Black, immigrant, indigenous and LGBTQIA+ artists. Allen Ginsberg called the Cafe “the most integrated place on the planet,” the Wall Street Journal wrote that the Cafe is “an antidote to gentrification,” NPR called the Cafe a “wildly diverse venue with socially conscious programming” that “speaks to the marginalized,” and John Leguizamo says the Cafe “put the street on stage… and made our lives real, our emotions real.” Learn more at www.nuyorican.org.

About National Queer Theater