NYS Writers Institute: Stephanie Pacheco, July 29

This reading was the culmination of a day that Stephanie Pacheco, the National Youth Poet Laureate, spent in Albany, that included a poetry workshop with local youth. It was held at the Alice Moore Black Arts & Cultural Center, 135 South Pearl St. Local activist Alice Green, whose grandmother was Alice Moore, gave the opening remarks. 

Adonis Richards, from Lucid Voices, performed “9 1/2 minutes,” a piece about the police killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020 that inspired world-wide protests.

Stephanie Pacheco grew up in the Bronx & began with an long, energetic rambling auto-biography, how she discovered poetry, her first poem (“Where I’m From”) that she has re-written, how she became the National Youth Poet Laureate. 

She read her poem “My President” which was inspired by Danez Smith’s poem of the same title, then a celebration, “Sisterhood,” how “in the hood I became a sister…,” then her “grown-up” version of her first poem, “Where I’m From,” about her neighborhood, & a field trip to the Bronx Zoo. A great evening of the joy of words & of the magic it can bring.

Thanks to the NYS Writers Institute & the Alice Moore Black Arts & Cultural Center for bringing this event to us.