The Triptych Project

media release: Join Arts + Literature Laboratory for the launch of The Triptych Project, a powerful new poetry initiative led by Madison poet laureate Steven Espada Dawson.

This special reading brings together five emerging, justice-impacted poets—KV Severallevels, Deshawn McKinney, Lily Someson, Andrew Chi Keong Yim, and juj e lepe—for an evening of urgent, necessary, and deeply human work.

The Triptych Project centers the realities of mass incarceration in Wisconsin, with particular attention to its disproportionate impact on American BIPOC communities. Through poetry, this initiative creates space for storytelling, reflection, and resistance.

This reading is the first of three interconnected events, which will also include:

•A writing workshop for justice-impacted community members, led by a nationally recognized poet

•A radio-hosted reading of poetry written by currently incarcerated writers

Come listen. Come witness. Come be part of a community engaging art as a force for care.

KV Severallevels is a Milwaukee-based lyricist, professional poet, and author whose work reflects the raw depth of lived experience and transformation. Born in Chicago and raised in Milwaukee from the age of eight, he began writing poetry in 2007 while incarcerated, drawing inspiration from writers such as Asha Bandele and Rudy Bankston. What started as a creative outlet quickly became a means of survival and self-expression, eventually leading to his work being published in a prison anthology.

Today, KV Severallevels performs regularly at open mic poetry events and continues to bridge the worlds of spoken word and hip-hop. His upcoming poetry collection, Mandatory Release, explores the complexities of freedom, struggle, and personal growth. Several of these poems also appear on his forthcoming rap album, Work Release, where his original Midwest flow blends East Coast lyricism with Southern influence.

Beyond music and poetry, KV Severallevels is also an emerging horror author. His forthcoming supernatural horror trilogy—There Are No Such Things, Of Men and Jinn, and Shayiteen—draws on spiritual folklore, psychological tension, and immersive storytelling.

A member of the Freedom Gang rap collective and a frequent host of the 414 Video Spotlight Show, KV Severallevels has built a reputation as a powerful voice in both the poetry and hip-hop communities—widely regarded as arguably the best rapper in Milwaukee, even if not yet the most widely known.

Lily Someson (she/they) is a poet from Gary, Indiana. She is the author of Mistaken for Loud Comets, winner of the Host Publications Spring 2021 chapbook prize, and has been published in the Academy of American Poets, Poetry Daily, Underblong, and Court Green among others. She graduated with her MFA in Poetry from Vanderbilt University and is now the co-owner of Baldwin's Books & Records, a radical bookstore pop-up in Madison.

Andrew Chi Keong Yim was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. He was awarded the 2024 New Voices Award in Poetry from Washington Square Review, selected by Terrance Hayes, and is a 2025 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship finalist. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets, The Adroit Journal, Frozen Sea, Shō Poetry Journal, Tupelo Quarterly, and other publications. Andrew has taught with the Wisconsin Prison Humanities Project and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he was the Martha Meir Renk Distinguished Graduate Fellow in poetry and received the August Derleth Prize for fiction. His debut poetry collection, The Ninth Island, is forthcoming from University of Pittsburgh Press in Spring 2027. Andrew lives in Queens and is a public school teacher in New York City.

Deshawn McKinney is a writer from Milwaukee, Wisconsin working in whatever medium is best to tell the story. His work appears in journals such as Lolwe, Ploughshares, and Glass: A Journal of Poetry. Deshawn has performed around the world, from Kingston, Jamaica to London, England, serves as an instructor for Madison Writers’ Studio’s Fourth Lake Writing Weekend and is a two time Pushcart Prize nominee. He is a 2016 Truman Scholar, a 2017 Marshall Scholar, and holds a Master in Social Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a Master in Creative Writing – Poetry from the University of East Anglia. His debut chapbook, father forgive me, was published by Black Sunflowers Poetry Press in 2021.

juj e lepe is a chicane poet, educator, and would-be naturalist from Stockton, California. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ninth Letter, Poetry Northwest, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. They hold an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. They live and write in the Midwest.

Steven Espada Dawson is the author of Late to the Search Party (Scribner, 2025). From East Los Angeles and the son of a Mexican immigrant, he has received fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the Poetry Foundation, and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. His poems appear in many journals and have been anthologized in Sarabande’s Another Last Call, Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and Pushcart Prize. He has served as a poetry editor for Copper Nickel and Sycamore Review and has taught creative writing at universities, libraries, and prisons across the country. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where he serves as poet laureate.