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MidnightRose: A Reading Series of Poetry and Prose

Esther Productions Inc., The Institute for African American Writing, and the Black Student Fund present a reading by Alexa Patrick, Carolyn Joyner, and jonetta rose barras

About the Authors

Alexa Patrick is a vocalist and poet from Connecticut. She is the author of Remedies for Disappearing (Haymarket Books, 2023) and holds fellowships from Cave Canem, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and more. Previous artistic partnerships of Alexa’s include Meta, Microsoft, The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts. In spring 2023, Alexa made her stage production debut as Un/Sung in the opera We Shall Not Be Moved, (dire. Bill T. Jones). Her work appears in a variety of publications, including Adroit, The Rumpus, CRWN Magazine, and The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic. 

Carolyn Joyner, a Washington, D.C. poet, uses contemporary and traditional form to examine life’s themes. Her work has been featured in various literary magazines and anthologies, among them, Revise the Psalm: Work Celebrating the Writing of Gwendolyn Brooks, Pleiades, Obsidian, Gathering Ground, Full Bleed, ArLiJo, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Plume Poetry 10, and Little Patuxent Review. She is a former WritersCorps instructor, volunteer poetry workshop leader for DC Public Library and the River of Words community project and has a Master of Arts degree in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University. She is a Cave Canem and Hurston-Wright Foundation fellow and has been awarded artist fellowship grants from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA). Her debut collection, Imagine His Mother Witnessing, is forthcoming in 2026.

jonetta rose barras is a poet, fiction writer, public scholar, cultural curator, and contextual journalist. She holds an honorary doctorate from Trinity Washington University. Her journalism has appeared in numerous publications: The DC Line, The Washington Post, The Washington City Paper, Essence, The Crisis magazine, The Washingtonian, and The New Republic among others. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in several anthologies including Amazing Graces: Yet Another Collection of Fiction by Washington Area Women, Full Moon on K Street: Poems about Washington, D.C.; It’s All Love: Black Writers on Soul Mates, Family and Friends; and In Search of Color Everywhere: A Collection of African American Poetry-Stewart (Tabori & Chang). She has published two collections of original poetry: The Corner Is No Place for Hiding and Dawn. Her best-selling memoir, Whatever Happened to Daddy's Little Girl: The Impact of Fatherlessness on African American Women, is considered the definitive work on the subject. 

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