Pride Poetry Stage & Open Mic at Commonhouse Aleworks – North Charleston, SC

About This Event

Join us for our fifth-annual Pride Poetry Stage at Commonhouse Aleworks on Thursday, June 5! We will hear from three featured readers, with open mic performers interspersed between their readings. Each open mic reader will have time for performing one poem.

Sign ups for the open mic will be available starting at 6:45 p.m., with limited availability.

After the readings and performances, we will have a quick Q&A with the feature poets, so bring your questions on form, poetics in life, and any other topic you’d like to as them about!

Itinerant Literate will have a selection of LGBTQ poetry from national and local poets available and will donate 15% of all sales for the week of Park Circle Pride to AFFA and We Are Family.

Feature Readers

Evelyn Berry

Evelyn Berry is an angry, horny, sad, transsexual, Southern poet, performer, editor, and educator living in South Carolina. She’s the author of Grief Slut (Sundress Publications, 2024) the chapbook Buggery (Bateau Press, 2020). Her chapbook T4T is forthcoming from Small Harbor Editions in 2026. She is the recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship and South Carolina Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship for Poetry. She is the winner of the BOOM Chapbook Prize, Button Poetry Short Form Contest, Dr. Linda Veldheer Memorial Prize, KAKALAK Poetry Prize, Emrys Poetry Prize, Broad River Prize for Prose, and other honors. Her work has appeared in dozens of journals, including Beloit Poetry Journal, Raleigh Review, Moist Poetry Journal, Gigantic Sequins, Longleaf Review, Taco Bell Quarterly, and elsewhere.

AsiahMae

AsiahMae, stylized A$iahMae, (they/she) is a Black, non-binary Southern poet, humorist and cultural worker with roots in Georgia, South and North Carolina. A multi-hyphenated artist, their background spans across film, curation, production, performance and language arts. Their work is an attempt to document the duality of the internal exploration and external expression of spirit, love, ritual and Black Southern connection to land and sea. A$iahmae is a Watering Hole Fellow and their work has been featured in The Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston Food & Wine Festival, The Post and Courier, and more. They are currently serving as the Second Poet Laureate of Charleston, SC.

Emily Wingfield

Emily Wingfield (She/They) is a Black and AAPI queer writer and activist based in Charleston, South Carolina — originally hailing from the Greater Philadelphia Area. Emily writes with a deeply vulnerable, grounded voice, to confront and understand painfully human experiences. Their work is centered around a variety of themes ranging from mental-health and family to navigating existence as a queer and BIPOC womxn. Emily is the author of the poetry collections BARELY THERE, SURVIVING, which was self-published in May 2021, THE CORNER OF FISHBURNE AND ASHLEY, which was published by Bottlecap Press in January 2022, COALESCE, which was self-published in April 2023, the mini collection DRAGON SPIRIT, which was self-published in May 2024, and I, OTHER, AND EVERYTHING ELSE, which was self-published in January 2025. They are currently at work on their first full-length poetry collection, CADENZA: NOTES FOR POETS AND THE SOUL. You can find Emily on Instagram @_emilywingfield, and online at https://linktr.ee/emilywingfield.