Introducing the Lovely Ms Bashir

Samiya Bashir, up close, personal. Remember her cat, Sheeba? Why of course you do.

Where are you from, where have you been, and why are you here (in New York)?

I'm "from" Ann Arbor, Michigan. Midwestern mix-up girl. I've been around the world and I'm thinkin...hmmm ... I may just have found my baby. Lived from California (LA & the Bay) to Chicago, down South (Hot Springs, Arkansas anyone?), skipped through D.C. like a riverstone and finally landed in NYC almost 8 years ago. Did the Brooklyn Black Literati thang for a while and finally came back home to uptown. Why am I here? Did the rest, did it well. Finally it came time to wrestle w/ the big dawgs ;-) ... so here I am, in my pose, piece by piece ready to take this shit down.

How would you describe your writing? Write it down in iambic pentameter.

(eh, hem):
I can't describe my writing very clear
in just a few words matching up my dear
for i'm a black american ya hear?
we tend to do a mashup (there to here)

i keep the poems closest to my heart
for everything i do they are the start
and i dare say they're closest to my heart
but still, that's just the beginning of my art-

istic ambitions i'm like dominique
deveraux -- black bitch -- kinda my mystique
but really that's just pretty tongue-in-cheek
my stories feature characters not weak

and i'll run you down in a magazine
'cuz my nonfiction prose remains quite clean
but lately i find it all too obscene
i'm just about ready to flee the scene

What are you working on now?

(see mash-up bit from above)

Hmm ... I'm working on production for my first full collection of poetry. I'm working on a play, I'm working on a novel, I'm working on writing social marketing materials for an African American HIV/AIDS outreach initiative, I'm working on writing an entirely different type of poetry than I've been writing before -- I'm working on stabbing through the leather and the microfiber, through the labels and the zippers and the snaps, through the flesh and the fat and the muscle and the bone, to stick straight in the organs -- i'm working on language that can shock us out of our stupor into remembering how to feel.

You are one of the founding members of Fire and Ink. Tell us about the organization.

Fire & Ink: A Festival for LGBT Writers of African Descent was first held in Chicago in 2002. It was an historic gathering of over 300 LGBT "black" writers and artists who came together for readings, panels, workshops and fellowship. Fire & Ink produces a bibliography of LGBT black writing and publications for each festival and has also spawned a listserv that has thousands of folks signed up around the country and around the world. It is an exciting, affirmative, instructive atmosphere for writers -- including the legendary, the established and the fledgling -- to come together and share and grow our work.

Fire & Ink II: The Revival is currently being planned for October 6-9, 2005 (Columbus Day Weekend) in Austin, Texas. Go to the website (which, I must say, is still being re-vamped with new information, etc.) for more information. Writers should feel free to sign up for the list-serve at yahoogroups.com ... the name is fireandink@yahoogroups.com.

Give us an annotated bibliography of your writings.

What are you smoking crack? That's what Google is for babes. Get in on the IPO floor! Okay, :-) What I *will* do is offer a run-down of a few PUBLICATIONS...where you can find some of my work (I believe there should be a head-roll inserted in there somewhere) the thing is, for many of these publications (print and online) I've written or published a number of pieces:

MY BOOKS:
"Where the Apple Falls" (Redbone Press, 2005)
"Best Black Women's Erotica 2" Editor (Cleis Press, 2002)
"Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social & Political Black
Literature & Art" (co-editor w/ Tony Medina & Quraysh Ali Lansana,
Third World Press, 2001)
"Wearing Shorts on the First Day of Spring" (chapbook of poems, 1999)
"American Visa" (chapbook of poems, 2002)

OTHER PEOPLE'S BOOKS:
"Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam"
"Best Lesbian Erotica 03"
"Cave Canem #7"
"Contemporary American Women's Poetry"
"A Christmas Collection"

MY OTHER EDITORIAL WORK:
Health of Harlem Chartbook (Columbia University's Harlem Health
Promotion Center)
Ms. Magazine (Books Editor, 2000-2001)
Black Issues Book Review Magazine (Senior Editor, 1999-2001,
Contributing Editor (2001-2003)
Curve Magazine, Contributing Editor (2000-2003)
NiaOnline.com (Books Producer)
Souljourn Cityguide Magazines (Managing Editor, 1999-2000)
Plus...I have served as editor of a number of people's books -- from
poetry to nonfiction and I'll not name them all)

OTHER PLACES WHERE MY WORK HAS BEEN PUBLISHED:
See above, and:
Obsidian III
Kuumba #4
Vibe Magazine
Seventeen Magazine
XXL Magazine
Africana.com
ColorLines Magazine
Lambda Book Report
The American Journal of Public Health
American Visions
Venus
Colors
HUES
Ache
Arise
San Francisco Bay Guardian
InsightOutBooks.com
QPC.com
Bookofthemonthclub.com
and a few others I forget ... and tons of reprints that them bitches never paid me for
(you hear me random European publications! Pay a sista! eh-hem. and thank you for the attention.)

SOME OL' OTHER SHIT:
Fire & Ink: A Festival of Lesbian & Gay Writers of African Descent
(2002) Co-Organizer
Cave Canem (2002-Present) Awarded 5-year fellowship in this prestigious
African American poetry workshop.
Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice (2002) Lesbian Poetry Award.
Black Pride NYC (9/99–9/00) Board Member & Chair of Media Committee
Amethyst & Indigo (12/97–6/98) Communications/NYC Coordinator—Black
Arts Performance Company.
The Black Girl Collective (2/95–10/95) Communications / Public & Media
Coordinator—Black Arts Performance Co.
Simba Music (1995) Public Relations / Promotions Consultant—Independent Recording Label
F.B.P. (10/93–4/94) Public Relations / Promotions Consultant—Black Arts Performance Co.

Your favorite book of the moment and why.

Now that's a hard ass question. My favorite book of the moment tends to be whatever I'm reading at the moment. Additionally, I tend to have 3-7 books going at any given moment. So, let's see ... what I'm reading (and/or re-reading) *right now* in rotation is:

The Hours (Michael Cunningham)
A Good Man Is Hard to Find (Flannery O'Connor)
Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class (Lawrence Otis Graham)
My Name is Asher Lev (Chaim Potok)
The Yoga Sutra (attributed to Patanjali, translated by Barbara Stoler Miller)
Diary (Chuck Palahniuk)
Interpreter of Maladies (Jhumpa Lahiri)
For the Time Being (Annie Dillard)
Stone Butch Blues (Leslie Feinberg)
Letters from Lexington (Noam Chomsky)
Alice Walker (Evelyn White)
Diving Into the Wreck (Adrienne Rich)
Nothin' Ugly Fly: Poems (Marvin K. White)
They Shall Run (Quraysh Ali Lansana)

A book I could read a million times over? There are about 100 of them, but there are 5 that immediately come to mind:

One Stick Song (Sherman Alexie)
Song of Solomon (Toni Morrison)
Living Room (June Jordan)
Diving Into the Wreck (Adrienne Rich)
The Leaf and the Cloud (Mary Oliver)
(you might throw in a handful of Margaret Atwood and George Orwell in there too, but let's not get picky because then we'd have to name the whole 100)

p.s. I don't have a favorite -- not even of any genre. I'm not good at essentialism in that way.

Wednesday, February 02, 2005 @ 04:07 PM