Kelly Tsai's Book Recommendations

Above: Kelly featured on HBO Special, "East of Main Street"

A few weeks ago, internationally acclaimed poet Kelly Tsai joined us as a guest on our Live Orange Broadcast, where she shared her recommendations for books educators can use to teach spoken word in the classroom. She's sent us her official book list, which you can find below! 

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Steven King
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
Writing Alone & With Others by Pat Schneider
June Jordan’s Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint by June Jordan
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
Wild Mind by Natalie Goldberg
A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver

Book Recommendations from NYC Youth Poet Laureate Ishmael Islam

Above: Video of Ishmael performing his poem, "Daydreaming at the Voting Booth"

Last week, when we aired our Live Orange Broadcast Episode, we had the pleasure of having New York City's youth poet laureate Ishmael Islam as our guest. During the episode, he mentioned a few book recommendations he had for educators interested in teaching spoken word poetry in the classroom. Here below is his complete list, which we are happy to share with our LitWorld community: 

• Teeth by Aracelis Girmay
• Kingdom Animalia by Aracelis Girmay
• Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
• Black Boy by Richard Wright
• On the Road by Jack Kerouac
• The Twentieth Century by Howard Zinn
• Homegirls and Hand Grenades by Sonia Sanchez
• Neon Vernacular by Yusef Komunyakaa

To learn more about Ishmael, follow him on Twitter on @IshEye. Thanks again to Ishmael for being our first Live Orange guest of the year!