This event takes place in person at Charis and on Crowdcast, Charis' virtual event platform. This event is free, but registration is required for virtual attendance. Please read the in-person event guidelines at the bottom of this page to be sure you can participate in the event. 

Charis welcomes Becky Thompson in conversation with Maya Marshall for a discussion of This Unruly Witness: June Jordan's Legacy, a collection of bold and tender writing on June Jordan's multidimensional legacy as a poet, healer, and activist.

This Unruly Witness was curated for people who see love as a life force, who seek a community that can sustain us, who know that "we are the ones we have been waiting for." Celebrating the life and legacy of the poet activist June Jordan, this collection illuminates why we need Jordan more than ever.

Featuring a foreword by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, an afterword from Imani Perry, essays, poems, letters, and interviews from internationally acclaimed poets and thinkers such as Angela Davis, Pratibha Parmar, Margo Okazawa-Rey, Naomi Shihab Nye, Afaa M. Weaver, E. Ethelbert Miller, and many other people touched by Jordan's work.

Becky Thompson Ph.D. is a poet, scholar, yogi, activist, and co-editor of This Unruly Witness: June Jordan’s Legacy. Her other books include Teaching with Tenderness, To Speak in Salt, Zero is the Whole I Fall into at Night and two edited poetry volumes, Making Mirrors: Righting/Writing by and For Refugees (with Jehan Bseiso) and Fingernails Across the Chalkboard: Poetry and Prose on HIV/AID from the Black Diaspora (with Randall Horton). Becky teaches social justice and creative writing at Simmons University in Boston. In the wee hours, she writes music and plays the electric guitar.

Maya Marshall is the poetry director and an editor at Haymarket Books. She has edited and published books including Mohammed El-Kurd’s Rifqa, Felicia Rose Chavez’s The Antiracist Writing Workshop, and Cheryl Boyce-Taylor’s Mama Phife Represents. Marshall publishes compelling, accessible poetry by writers who are committed to a political, cultural, and arts ethic. On the nonfiction side, she seeks storytellers, whose expertise inform their lyrical, voice-driven, and self-possessed prose. Across both lists, she publishes writers who are guided by a mission of justice and liberation. A poet and writer, Marshall is the author of All the Blood Involved in Love and a cofounder of underbelly. Marshall has earned fellowships from MacDowell and Cave Canem, among others. Her poems and essays are featured in numerous publications including Prose for the People (Penguin Random House, 2025) and the American Poetry Review. She serves as a literary program consultant for the Writing Freedom Fellowship. Marshall lives in Decatur, Georgia.

The event is free and open to all people, but we encourage and appreciate a donation of $5-20 in support of the work of Charis Circle, our programming non-profit. Donate on Crowdcast or via our website: www.chariscircle.org/donate or in person at the event.

Charis Books is a fully wheelchair accessible space with on site van accessible parking, two ramps, and additional overflow accessible parking nearby. Additional accessibility information can be found on the Accessibility page of our website. 

In-person event guidelines:

All attendees must wear a face mask during the event.

We will begin seating people at 7:00 PM ET.

This event will be live-streamed via Crowdcast. 

As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event.

If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request specific accessibility accommodations, please contact info@charisbooksandmore.com or call the store at 404-524-0304.

Please contact us at info@chariscircle.org or 404-524-0304 if you would like ASL interpretation at this event. If you would like to watch the event with live AI captions, you may do so by watching it in Google Chrome and enabling captions: Instructions here. If you have other accessibility needs or if you are someone who has skills in making digital events more accessible please don't hesitate to reach out to info@chariscircle.org.

By attending our event, whether in person or virtually, you agree to our Code of Conduct: Our event seeks to provide a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof), class, or technology choices. We do not tolerate harassment in any form. Unsolicited sexual language and imagery are not appropriate. Anyone violating these rules will be expelled from this event and all future events at the discretion of the organizers. Please report all harassment to Charis staff immediately or email info@chariscircle.org.

This Unruly Witness: June Jordan's Legacy -- Becky Thompson in Conversation with Maya Marshall