Join us for the 2022 World Voices Festival in LA, featuring conversations celebrating the power of literature to transform the world.

Somali British writer Warsan Shire was awarded the inaugural Brunel International African Poetry Prize and served as the first Young Poet Laureate of London. She is the youngest member of the Royal Society of Literature and is included in the Penguin Modern Poets series. The celebrated collaborator on Beyonce’s Lemonade who, in her poetry, “conjures up a new language for belonging and displacement” (The New Yorker) will be joined in conversation with National Book Critics Circle Award-winning poet Morgan Parker—a “dynamic craftsperson” of “considerable consequence in American poetry” (The New York Times), who “explores how identities are constructed, not only through the prism of race but also through historical legacies and pop culture” (Time Magazine). These two titans of contemporary poetry will read their work and discuss family, diaspora, trauma, resilience, and Shire’s latest collection of poems, Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head, which she describes as “songs for the refugee.” Booksales by Reparations Club. Made possible by the support of the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.