The People's Tongue: How Writers & Editors Transform American English

Along with Tina Chang, Nicole Counts, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Ilan Stavans, BPL Presents celebrates the 10th anniversary of Brooklyn-based, award-winning independent nonprofit publishing house Restless Books & the publication of the anthology The People's Tongue: Americans & the English Language.

The People's Tongue tells the story of how English became "American" over a period of 450 years, a panel of distinguished editors and poets will discuss the current state of the American publishing industry and the ways in which it changes the English language. What is the role of independent presses? In what way do new books represent the changes American culture is undergoing? Do editors understand the needs of diverse readers? And is English as alive on the written page as it is with the spoken word?        

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Participants

Tina Chang is the author of three critically acclaimed poetry collections: Hybrida (W. W. Norton, May 2019), Of Gods & Strangers (Four Way Books, 2011), and Half-Lit Houses (Four Way Books, 2004). She is also co-editor of the Norton anthology, Language for a New Century, Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond. She was the first woman to be named Poet Laureate of Brooklyn and she served in this role for over a decade. Professor and Director of Creative Writing at her alma mater, Binghamton University, she oversees the initiatives under the Binghamton Center for Writers.

 

Nicole Counts (she/her) is a Senior Editor at One World, an imprint of Random House. started her career in marketing and publicity at PublicAffairs and Bold Type Books. Books she has worked on have won or been nominated for the National Book Award, the Lambda Literary Award, The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, various PEN Literary Awards, and more. She is an active member of various publishing equity groups, as well as a long-time volunteer with Well-Read Black Girl. She was a finalist for the 2020 PW Star Watch, an active speaker on publishing/book-related issues, and has been profiled in Gagosian Quarterly and Publishers Weekly. She has written for Poets & Writers, Brooklyn Magazine, Artnoir, and more.

Yusef Komunyakaa’s numerous collections of poetry include Dien Cai Dau (1988), which won The Dark Room Poetry Prize; Thieves of Paradise (1998), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems (1993), for which he received both the Pulitzer Prize and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; Warhorses; The Chameleon Couch (a finalist for the National Book Award); The Emperor of Water Clocks; and most recently Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth: New and Selected Poems 2001-2021. He served as New York’s 11th State Poet Laureate. Komunyakaa is the recipient of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation and the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets. His most recent honors include the 2021 Griffin Poetry Lifetime Recognition Award, Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award, and the Lannan Literary Award for Lifetime Achievement. For over a decade, he was Global Professor and Distinguished Senior Poet at New York University until his retirement in 2021.

Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities, Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College, the publisher of Restless Books, and a consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary. His latest book is The People's Tongue: Americans and the English Language.