Friday, August 29, 2025 at 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM
2220 Arts + Archives, Los Angeles
The latest monthly installment of the SUMARR summer reading series includes Benjamin Heim Shepard, Teresa Carmody, Kathleen Maris Paltrineri, Prageeta Sharma and Kathleen Kim. ∆ **Benjamin Heim Shepard** is a professor of Human Services at New York City College of Technology, located across the street from Brooklyn Bridge in the epicenter of a rapidly transforming downtown Brooklyn. Much of Shepard's scholarship is based on the ethnographic study of social services and social movements in New York. He is the author/editor of many books, including Rebel Friendships, The Beach Beneath the Streets and From ACT UP to the WTO: Urban Protest and Community Building in the Era of Globalization. **Teresa Carmody** (she/they) is the author of four books: A Healthy Interest in the Lives of Others, The Reconception of Marie, Maison Femme: a fiction, and Requiem. Their writing has appeared in LitHub, Los Angeles Review of Books, Michigan Quarterly Review, and more. She teaches at University of Nebraska Omaha. **Kathleen Maris Paltrineri** is a poet-translator from Iowa and the recipient of a 2021–22 Fulbright fellowship to Norway for translation research. Her translation of Norwegian poet Kristin Berget’s and when the light comes it will be so fantastic (Northwestern University Press, 2025) is supported by a Stanley Award for International Research and by NORLA, Norwegian Literature Abroad. For her own poetry, Paltrineri has received scholarships and residencies from USF Verftet, Arctic Circle Residency, and more. Paltrineri’s poems have recently appeared in Bone Bouquet, Bennington Review, CALYX, and jubilat. **Prageeta Sharma** is the author of six collections of poetry; her most recent collection is Onement Won, out from Wave Books (September 2025). She is the founder of the conference Thinking Its Presence: An Interdisciplinary Conference on Race, Creative Writing, and Artistic and Aesthetic Practices, a recent recipient of the 2025 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, and is currently the Henry G. Lee ’37 professor of English at Pomona College **Kathleen Kim** is an experimental musician and composer with backgrounds in jazz, improvisation and classical theories. She plays solo and with groups with her violin, voice, mandocaster, keys, and effects. Kathleen's longtime collaborations include avant jazz chamber ensemble LA Fog and experimental duo SheKhan. Her performance highlights include the openings of the 2012 Whitney Biennial and the 2017 Venice Biennale in the Central Pavilion as part of Dawn Kasper's installations. Kathleen has played and studied with lots of people she admires, especially Yusef Lateef who has had a lasting influence on her approach to performance and composition. Kathleen is also a tenured professor of law at LMU Loyola Law School where she recently served as the inaugural Associate Dean of Equity & Inclusion. She teaches, writes about, and advocates for immigrants' rights through workers' rights and critical race feminist frameworks. Her recent publications include Feminist Judgments: Immigration Law Opinions Rewritten (Cambridge University Press, 2023) and Critical Immigration Legal Theory, Boston University Law Review (2024)