ONLINE: Sean Avery Medlin

media release: A Room of One's Own welcomes Sean Avery Medlin, author of 808s & Otherworlds, for a conversation on Crowdcast with Marlin M. Jenkins!

808s & Otherworlds: Memories, Remixes, & Mythologies announces a bold and incendiary new voice in Sean Avery Medlin. Against the backdrop of the Phoenix suburbs where they were raised, Medlin interrogates the effects of media misrepresentation on the performance of Black masculinity. Through storytelling rhymes and vulnerable narratives in conversation with both contemporary Hip-Hop culture and systemic anti-Blackness, 808s & Otherworlds pieces together a speculative reality where Blackfolk are simultaneously superhuman and dehumanized.

From the gut-wrenchingly real stories of young lovers unmythed by segregation or former classmates appropriating Black culture, to the fantastic settings of Hip-Hop songs and comic characters, Medlin weaves a tapestry of worlds and otherworlds while composing a love letter to family and self, told to an undeniably energetic beat.

Sean Avery Medlin (they/them) creates rap, poetry, prose and performance. Their music, literature, and theater all question the limits of Black masculinity, media (mis)representation, and personal narrative.

Marlin M. Jenkins was born and raised in Detroit and is the author of the chapbook Capable Monsters (Bull City Press, 2020). His poetry has found homes through Indiana Review, The Rumpus, Iowa Review, Waxwing, TriQuarterly, Kenyon Review Online, & New Poetry from the Midwest. He has worked as a teaching artist with young writers at Inside Out Literary Arts in Detroit and the Neutral Zone in Ann Arbor. He earned his MFA in poetry at the University of Michigan, where he then taught writing and literature. He currently lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and you can find him online at marlinmjenkins.com.