The Bookplate is continuing their 2024 season of author lectures on June 22nd with a celebration of LGBTQ+ Pride Month! Regional poet Sunu P. Chandy and author Jeffrey Dale Lofton will be reading selections of their work and fielding questions during a 2pm Saturday event at Sultana’s Lawrence Wetlands Preserve.
Sunu P. Chandy (she/her) is a social justice activist as a poet and a civil rights attorney. She is the daughter of immigrants from Kerala, India, and lives in Washington, DC with her family. Sunu’s award-winning collection of poems, My Dear Comrades, was published by Regal House. This collection includes stories about Sunu’s experiences including as a woman, parent, partner, daughter of South Asian immigrants, and member of the LGBTQ+ community. These poems cover themes ranging from immigration, activism, friendship loss, fertility challenges, adoption, caregiving, and life during a pandemic. Sunu’s poems provide company for many who may be experiencing isolation through any one or more of these experiences and remind us that we are not, in fact, going it alone. Sunu’s work can also be found in anthologies including The Penguin Book of Indian Poets and The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood. Sunu is currently a Senior Advisor with Democracy Forward focusing on helping to counter the attacks on DEI, and she also serves on the board of the Transgender Law Center. Sunu has practiced law for 25 years including most recently as the Legal Director of the National Women’s Law Center for six years until August 2023, where she oversaw litigation and led their LGBTQ+ equality work. Sunu earned her B.A. in Peace and Global Studies/Women’s Studies from Earlham College, her law degree from Northeastern University School of Law and following that, in 2013, her MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Queens College/The City University of New York. Sunu was included as one the Queer Women of Washington and one of Go Magazine’s 100 Women We Love. Sunu is delighted to celebrate her first collection of poetry, My Dear Comrades, with all of you and with the book’s fabulous cover artist, Ragni Agarwal.
Jeffrey Dale Lofton hails from Warm Springs, Georgia, best known as the home of Roosevelt’s Little White House. He calls the nation’s capital home now and has for over three decades. He is a senior advisor at the Library of Congress where he is surrounded by books and people who love books—in short, paradise. He is a contributing editor for WELL READ Magazine and co-host of the Inside Voices podcast alongside author Robert Gwaltney.
Red Clay Suzie is his first novel, a fictionalized memoir written through his personal lens as an outsider—gay and living with a disability in a conservative family and community in the Deep South.
He was the Pat Conroy Literary Center Spring 2024 Writer-in-Residence. Red Clay Suzie was Longlisted for The Center for Fiction 2023 First Novel Prize, named an Indie Next Pick by the American Booksellers Association, and was awarded the Seven Hills Literary Prize for Fiction.
You can learn more about Jeffrey at JeffreyDLofton.com
For more event details, contact The Bookplate at 410-778-4167 or contact@thebookplate.net. These events are free and open to the public. The Lawrence Wetlands Preserve is located at 301 S. Mill Street in Chestertown, Maryland. As a reminder, there is no parking available at the Lawrence Wetlands Preserve, so guests are encouraged to park in the town lots off of Cannon Street. The Bookplate will continue their event series with local author Jamie Kirkpatrick on Wednesday, July 10th at The Kitchen and Pub at The Imperial.
