My Dear Comrades: Sunu Chandy & Sham-e-Ali Nayeem in conversation

Please join us for a reading and discussion with poets Sunu P. Chandy and Sham-e-Ali Nayeem in celebration of Sunu's new book of poems, My Dear Comrades.

Please join us for a reading and discussion with poets Sunu P. Chandy and Sham-e-Ali Nayeem in celebration of Sunu's new book of poems, My Dear Comrades. My Dear Comrades is a book of poems by Sunu Chandy, which was selected for the 2021 Terry J. Cox Prize, and will be published by Regal House in Spring 2023. Chandy

My Dear Comrades will be available for purchase courtesy of Making Worlds Bookstore.

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Author Bios:

Sunu P. Chandy (she/her) is a social justice activist through her work as a poet and a civil rights attorney. She was included as one the 2021 Queer Women of Washington and one of Go Magazine’s 100 Women We Love: Class Of 2019. 

Sunu’s collection of poems, My Dear Comrades, was selected for the 2021 Terry J. Cox Prize, and will be published by Regal House in Spring 2023. The book is available for pre-order here. Sunu’s work can also be found in publications including Asian American Literary Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Poets on Adoption, Split this Rock’s online social justice database, The Quarry, and in anthologies including The Penguin Book of Indian Poets, The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood and This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation. 

Sunu also serves as the legal director for the National Women’s Law Center and leads litigation related projects. She also provides guidance on policy work in the areas of Workplace Justice and LGBTQ rights and serves on the board of the Transgender Law Center.

Sunu is a graduate of Northeastern Law School and Earlham College, where she majored in Women’s Studies and Peace and Global Studies. Sunu also more recently completed her MFA in poetry at Queens College, City University of New York.

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Author of the poetry collection, City of Pearls (UpSet Press 2019), Sham-e-Ali Nayeem is a Hyderabadi Muslim American poet, musician, interdisciplinary artist, and recovering social justice lawyer. Her poetry has appeared in Apiary, The Margins, Wildness Journal (Platypus Press), Origins Journal (in partnership with Split This Rock), Dusie and Mizna. Her work can also be found in numerous anthologies, including Shattering the Stereotypes: Muslim Women Speak Out (Olive Branch Press, 2005), Living Islam Out Loud: American Muslim Women Speak (Beacon Press, 2005) and Shout Out: Women of Color Respond to Violence (Seal Press, 2008).

She has released two albums, City of Pearls (2019) and the upcoming Moti Ka Sheher (2023), featuring musical interpretations from her book resting in soundscapes ranging from classical rabab to self-composed and produced electronica. Her work explores grief and loss, stories of diasporic Muslim Indian existence, ancestral transmissions, international solidarities and space to imagine. Sham-e-Ali is a recipient of the Loft Literary Center Spoken Word Immersion Fellowship.