East Window’s Banned Book Club
presents
Writers on Resistance and Open Mic
Curated by Hillary Leftwich
Westword Article by Teague Bohlen
Gather with us for an evening centered on writing that speaks directly to the moment we are living in. Rajiv Mohabir, Hillary Leftwich, and Crisosto Apache will each read short pieces that reflect their individual approaches to resistance, care, and truth telling. After the featured readings, the floor will open for an optional open mic where attendees can share brief pieces connected to resistance, creativity, or community. Conversation and questions will follow. The night is meant to bring people together through literature, reflection, and shared presence.
Writers on Resistance is a Substack series that invites writers, artists, and creatives to speak directly about how their work functions as resistance. Each piece considers what it means to create in a political climate that increasingly targets artists, diversity, education, and expression. Contributors reflect on the role of art during times of suppression, the pressures they face, and the choices they make to continue speaking, teaching, and creating. The series offers a space for testimony, strategy, and truth from those who refuse to be quieted or erased.
Read the series here: https://substack.com/@hillaryleftwich
Hillary Leftwich is a multi-media writer and the author of Ghosts Are Just Strangers Who Know How to Knock (Agape Editions, 2023), Aura (Future Tense Books, 2022), and Saint Dymphna’s Playbook (Limit Zero, 2025). She teaches creative writing, business writing, and environmental writing and storytelling at several universities, writing organizations, and nonprofits for adults, previously incarcerated and hospitalized youth, and unhoused populations. She centers her writing around themes of class struggle, the impact of disease, mental illness, ritual, and the supernatural. On the outskirts of the writing world, she teaches Tarot and Tarot writing workshops focusing on strengthening divination abilities along with writing. She is a professional Tarot reader, death worker, and speaks with the dead.
www.hillaryleftwich.com
IG @HillaryLeftwich
Rajiv Mohabir, poet, memoirist, and translator, is the author of five books of poetry, the latest is Seabeast (Four Way Books 2025). His books have been awarded gold in Forward Indies and Eric Hoffer Medal Provocateur. His other honors include being finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/America Open Book Award, the Lambda Literary Award, the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction, and both second place and finalist for the Guyana Prize for Literature. His translations have won the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the American Academy of Poets. Currently he teaches poetry at the University of Colorado Boulder.
https://www.rajivmohabir.com
IG: @rajivmohabir
Crisosto Apache is from Mescalero, New Mexico, on the Mescalero Apache reservation. Crisosto is Mescalero Apache, Chiricahua Apache, and Diné (Navajo) of the Salt Clan, born for the Towering House Clan. Apache attended and earned an MFA at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), and is an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing. Crisosto is also an editor-at-large for The Offing Magazine. Apache’s books are GENESIS (Lost Alphabet)-Out-of-Print & Ghostword (Gnashing Teeth Publishing), winner of the Publishing Triangle’s 2023 Betty Berzon Emerging Writers Award and a finalist for the 2023 Colorado Authors League Award in poetry, with a new poetry collection is(ness), from Gnashing Teeth Publishing. Apache is also a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee.
https://crisostoapache.com
IG: @crisosto_apache
