Chinaka Hodge Book Party

City Lights is about to publish the debut book from renowned local playwright, rapper, and poet Chinaka Hodge, Dated Emcees. On Tuesday, June 21 at 7PM at City Lights Bookstore she celebrates the book's publication. Joining here are Tongo Eisen-Martin and RyanNicole Peters.

Dated Emcees received great praise from Dave Eggers, who said, "This is an absolute powerhouse of a book, and a new pinnacle for Chinaka Hodge…She deserves a wide audience, an attentive audience, an audience that wants to be astounded.” Oakland’s Daveed Diggs, star of the Pulitzer-Prize winning and Tony-nominated Hamilton adds, "Chinaka Hodge is hands down, unequivocally, my favorite writer of words…These are poems to read every day. To make mantras from. They are the best poems you've ever read."

Chinaka Hodge's poems, editorials, interviews and prose have been featured in Newsweek, San Francisco Magazine, Believer Magazine, PBS, NPR, CNN, C-Span, and in two seasons of HBO’s Def Poetry. She worked at Youth Speaks for over a decade and is as a founding member of a collaborative hip hop ensemble, The Getback. She is currently the Associate Director of Program & Pedagogy at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.