Reading Series - Lynnée Denise with Airea 'Dee' Matthews

The Creative Writing Reading Series is proud to host Lynnée Denise in conversation with our own Airea 'Dee' Matthews. All are welcome!

Lynnée Denise, a global practitioner of sound, language, and Black Atlantic thought, is an Amsterdam-based writer and interdisciplinary artist originally from Los Angeles, California. Influenced by her parents' record collection and the 1980s, Denise’s work explores the intimacies of underground nightclub movements, music migration, and bass culture within the African Diaspora. She is a doctoral student in the Department of Visual Culture at Goldsmiths, University of London, where her research examines how iterations of sound system culture create a living archive and refuge for the Black queer diaspora. Her debut book, Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters (University of Texas Press), offers a narrative journey of reclamation that details and humanizes the life, musical contributions, and cultural impact of Willie Mae Thornton.

                                                    More about Aire 'Dee' Matthews

Airea D. Matthews’ debut poetry collection, Simulacra, won the prestigious 2016 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. She is also the author of Bread and Circus, a memoir-in-verse that addresses class and race, which received the 2024 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry. Matthews is an associate professor and co-chairs the creative writing department at Bryn Mawr College, where she has been honored with the Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award.