The Waves features Alma Mathijsen, Megan McHugh, Sven Davisson, Poets Reading the News, and more! 

The Waves returns at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 24, at Antenna (3718 St. Claude) featuring Alma Mathijsen, Megan McHugh, Sven Davisson, Poets Reading the News, and more.

Alma Mathijsen was born in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. She earned her Bachelors Degree in Image & Language at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Creative Writing at Pratt Institute in New York. She is the author of six plays, a collection of short stories and three novels. Her first novel Everything is Carmen was published by The Busy Bee in 2011, followed by The Great Good Things. Her latest novel Forget the Girls has been critically acclaimed, and is nominated for the BNG BANK Literary Prize. Mathijsen writes essays on feminism, representation and grief for NRC Handelsblad. Her work has also appeared in Vice US and Vice UK. In the winter of 2016 Alma Mathijsen found herself on strangely familiar grounds while on a road trip through Louisiana and Mississippi. Strangely, because she had never been there or anywhere else in the Southern States before. While visiting several plantations in the area she wondered when in her life she had also looked the other way. The vast majority of the plantations tell beautiful stories about the lives of rich white rulers, and conveniently forget to mention the enslaved people. Things she saw made her realize that she too contributes to racism in society. What stories had she been telling herself in order to look away? Now what to do with that knowledge as a human being and a writer?

Megan McHugh is a poet, essayist and flower farmer in New Orleans.

Sven Davisson is a writer and photographer based in New Orleans. He is co-publisher with his husband of Rebel Satori Press and its imprint QueerMojo. The founding editor of Ashé Journal, he is the author of the collections The Star Set Matrix & Other Magikal Essays, The Starry Dynamo: The Machinery of the Night Remixed, and the recently released poetry collection The Desire Line: Memory and Impermanence. His work has also appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Suffered from the Night: Queering Bram Stoker’s DraculaThe Gnostic, and Wilde Stories 2009: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction.

Elle Aviv Newton is founder and editor of Poets Reading The News, the innovative publishing platform bridging journalism and poetry, with Jenna Spagnolo. A fourth-generation Oaklander, she is writer in residence at B4BEL4B Gallery. She regularly curates visual art, performance, and poetry events in the Bay Area and is a regular contributor to KPFA Radio on Project Censored. She holds degrees in history and art criticism at Mills College. She has lived abroad extensively, most notably in Bangkok and Penang, and calls the Big Mango her second home. www.poetsreadingthenews.com www.elleavivnewton.com

Jenna Spagnolo (they/them) is an activist, cultural producer and poet from Washington DC. They’re in New Orleans with the team from Poets Reading the News, the world’s only newspaper written by poets. Jenna has shared poetry through radio shows, film festivals, podcasts, and events around the country. You can learn more about their work through the website, www.PoetsReadingTheNews.com.