Watershed Reading Series

media release:

Join us Saturday, June 17, 2023 at 7 PM for a special Watershed Reading featuring UW-Madison MFA poet Renée Lepreau, Chicago poet Nile Lansana, and Milwaukee poet Destinny Fletcher. Bringing experiences of midwifery, amplifying marginalized voices, womanhood, and survival, these three poets are sure to energize and inspire listeners with their distinct voices.

Destinny Fletcher, also known as “Deolinda Abstrac”: A woman with the power to inspire womanhood through the phenomenon in her voice. With Milwaukee, WI as her hometown, art becomes her sound and her greatest enigma. She self-published her recent poetry collection, "Black Girl Be Storm" in May of 2016 and “Fireflies & Peroxide” in May of 2014. She continues to rock stages among the many cities she touches. She has worked as a High School Slam League Coach for Still Waters Collective and Mentor with Dasha Kelly from 2012 to 2016, became a 2012 State Poetry Slam Finalist as well as competed in 2013 LTAB (Louder Than a Bomb) College Team Slam. She has also been an actress in Yetta Young's "Butterfly Confessions” stage play in Milwaukee in November 2015 & June 2017 as well as “UNTAMED” in July & October of 2016 with Milwaukee's own community theater group, "MPower Theater", and a Collaborator in "UW-Milwaukee Women's Resource Center Presents: The Vagina Monologues" in... Read More

Nile Lansana is an interdisciplinary artist from the South Side of Chicago. An acclaimed writer, poet, performer, and filmmaker, his work is centered around revealing radical truths and amplifying marginalized voices and narratives through a lens of Black imagination and visionary intention. He is a nominee for the inaugural Chicago Poet Laureate position. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with degrees in Journalism and English—Creative Writing. He is a nominee for the inaugural Chicago Poet Laureate. He won the 2021 Ronald Wallace Poetry Thesis Prize and 2020 George B Hill Poetry Prize. His work is published in American Gun: A Poem by 100 Chicagoans, The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, & elsewhere. He holds fellowships from the Rebuild Foundation and Obsidian Foundation. He is a proud uncle and the oldest of four Black boys.

Photo credit: Chip Moody @chip_moody

Renée Lepreau is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at UW-Madison. Previously she worked as a midwife, lactation consultant and community organizer. Her poems have appeared in Seneca Review, The Worcester Review, Dunes Review, Santa Ana River Review, and others. Her photographs have been exhibited in group shows at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Harvey Milk Photo Center, and others.