Saturday 14 March 2026, 7.30pm
Join the87press for Mushaira, an evening of poetry, music, food, and community. Mushaira is a live literature reading series featuring authors published by independent presses, and is rooted in South Asian tradition of poetry and community.
With readings by Emily Lee Luan and Megan Pinto (alongside bassist Seth Barden), Whiting Award recipient Annie Wenstrup, Palestinian poet Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, and Indian modernist Mantra Mukim. Joined by Marxist poet Clint Burnham.
This evening celebrates the publication of five poetry collections—回 / Return by Emily Lee Luan, Saints of Little Faith by Megan Pinto, The Museum of Unnatural Histories by Annie Wenstrup, Something about Living by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, and Glitchwork by Mantra Mukim.
Enjoy DJ Jimmy Two Shoes’ tunes throughout the night and grab a bite to eat from Chef Yogi’s pop up kitchen, serving delicious Sri Lankan cuisine.
To help the chef prepare and minimise food waste, please purchase your tickets as soon as possible. All meals will range from £10-£15 with smaller snack options also available.
Established in 2018, the87press is an Asian, LGBTQIA+, and neurodiverse led publishing collective and events curator in South London. We prioritize modernism, anti-colonialism, anti-racism, and environmentalism in our print publications of poetry, fiction, and essays. Additionally, we offer educational and creative workshops, industry leading live events, and regular commissioned work with online journal of culture theHythe. Committed to equity, all authors receive fair contracts regardless of their background. As part of Arts Council England's National Portfolio, we contribute to the Let's Create project and look forward to fostering inclusive learning spaces as the only NPO in the London Borough of Sutton.
Emily Lee Luan is the author of 回 / Return, a winner of the Nightboat Poetry Prize and forthcoming with the87press in the UK, and I Watch the Boughs (2021), selected by Gabrielle Calvocoressi for a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. A 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow and the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry 2021, American Poetry Review, Lithub, and elsewhere. She teaches at Adelphi University and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Megan Pinto is the author of Saints of Little Faith, published by the87press (2025, UK) and Four Way Books (2024, US). Her poems can be found in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Ploughshares, Lit Hub and elsewhere. She has won the Anne Halley Prize from the Massachusetts Review and an Amy Award from Poets & Writers, as well as scholarships and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference and Storyknife. Megan lives in Brooklyn and holds an MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College.
Annie Wenstrup (Dena’ina) is the author of The Museum of Unnatural Histories and a 2025 Whiting Award recipient. She held a Museum Sovereignty Fellowship with the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center (Alaska office) supported through a Journey to What Matters grant from The CIRI Foundation. She lives in Fairbanks, Alaska.
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is a poet, essayist and translator. She is author of three books of poetry: Something about Living (University of Akron Press, 2024; the87press, 2025), shortlisted for the PEN Heaney Prize 2025, winner of the 2024 US National Book Award for Poetry, and the 2022 Akron Poetry Prize; Kaan & Her Sisters (Trio House Press), finalist for the 2024 Firecracker Award and honourable mention for the 2024 Arab American Book Award; and Water & Salt (Red Hen), winner of the 2018 Washington State Book Award and honourable mention of the 2018 Arab American Book Award. She is also the author of two chapbooks, Arab in Newsland, winner of the 2016 Two Sylvias Prize, and Letters from the Interior (Diode, 2019), finalist for the 2020 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize.
Mantra Mukim is a poet and essayist from Raipur, India, currently based in Oxford. His work has appeared in Minor Literature, SpamZine, Datableed, Poetry Review, Hotel, and Rialto among other places. His Hindi poems have been featured in समावर्तन (Samavartan), and anthologised in युवाद्वादश (Twelve Young Poets). He co-edits Almost Island.
Clint Burnham was born in Comox, on Canada’s west coast, in 1962; he teaches creative writing and psychoanalysis at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. Books include Be Labour Reading (poetry, 1997), Smoke Show (novel, 2005), Pound @ Guantánamo (poetry, 2016), The Old Man: New Stories (2024), and The Goldberg Variations (poetry, 2024). Clint is also the author of works of criticism and theory, including Fredric Jameson and The Wolf of Wall Street (2016) and, most recently, Mari Ruti and Climate Change: From Grief to Creativity (2026). His Dub Version: New and Selected Poems is forthcoming from the87press.
Seth Barden plays the bass. The big looking one you see in orchestras and the smaller looking ones that strap over your shoulder like when The Beatles played Ed Sullivan. In recent years Seth has performed with Robert Finley (Easy Eye Sound), Dawn Landes (Yep Roc), Super Yamba Band (Ubiquity Records) with notable performances at the New Orleans Heritage and Jazz Festival and the television program CBS Saturday Morning. Seth lives in Brooklyn where he can be found playing Avant Space Horror music with his jazz quartet, Marked for Death.
Forever a humble student of the dancefloor, Jimmy Two Shoes is inspired by music and its capacity for creating those magical moments. As a Subtle Radio resident and multi-genre label boss of Sub Merchants, Jwarn seamlessly navigates an array of bass-infused flavors, delivering the flows to wriggle your toes to.
