About me: Josh Healey is a writer, educator, community organizer, and author of Hammertime (OMAI/First Wave Press).
Born and raised in Washington, DC, Healey has performed and taught spoken word and populist poetry at high schools, universities, and festivals across the country. Co-founder of the First Wave program at the University of Wisconsin, he helped build the first college hip-hop arts program in the nation.
A two-time National Poetry Slam participant, Healey has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, and NPR. Recently, he has shared his work at such venues as Harvard University, UC-Berkeley, the Wisconsin Book Festival, Progressive Jewish Voices, and the Arab Cultural Center.
Healey currently lives in Oakland, CA and works with Youth Speaks to empower young artists and activists across the Bay Area.
For booking info (performances, readings, and workshops), contact jghealey@gmail.com
"Josh Healey writes with a certain sleight of hand – laughs tucked into dirges, smiles taking shelter in prayer – he is deft, like that. Like the Hood meets Big Ten. Like finding afikomen, reading Hammertime is both solemn and joyous. It is for white boy feminists and the black girls who sweat their style. This book signals the crossing of borders in a humble moment, at just the right time."
-Chinaka Hodge, playwright and author of For Girls With Hips
"Hammertime is both song and searchlight, and Josh Healey is exploring a complex world and his place in it. In so doing, he has made beauty out of the poems' very search for themselves, in the poignant conversations with his grandfather, his celebration of his hometowns, in his starkly articulated rants against the evils of racism, sexism and his own privilege. The book is a wonderful coming out song, a voice so specific and in the process of honing itself so finely, that we find we must place ourselves here, at this special place where its sirens blare and the search begins; a most noteworthy and auspicious debut."
-- Roger Bonair Agard, National Poetry Slam champion and author, Tarnish and Masquerade
"Soulful and searching, self-critical and wise, Josh Healey's debut poetry collection is cause for celebration. There are no false borders here; politics and love, geography and guilt, faith and frustration are all subway stops in the same luminous city of words.
-- Adam Mansbach, author of The End of the Jews and Angry Black White Boy
"Having devoted enormous energy to making spoken word an integral part of the cultural and academic life of the University of Wisconsin, Josh Healey shows that he is a gifted poet in his own right. Weaving together personal experience, political critique, and social commentary in a powerful and moving way, Hammertime is a major achievement."
-- Erik Olin Wright, Vilas Distinguished Professor of Sociology, University of Wisconsin
"All good political poetry is love poetry. With Hammertime, Josh Healey has written the world an open-mouthed kiss, recognizing that for all its flaws, for all the obstacles ahead of us, the world is ours to love and ours to change."
--Kyle "El Guante" Myhre, hip-hop artist, El Guante’s Haunted Studio Apartment
Performing "Queer Intifada" live in DC at Busboys & Poets:
Performing "Last Ride" live at the Chico Poetry Slam feature:
Who I'd like to meet: Barbara Nestor. Tony Kushner. Amiri Baraka. Evo Morales. Elvira Arellano. Muhammad Ali. Peter Norman. Malcolm Goldman. Devorah Major. Jessie's Girl.
check out www.myspace/machouseenterprises and www.machouse.webs.com for info, videos, pics. Also, tune into Diamond Mind Radio Every Monday 4pm-6pm. Just call 917-803-4197 to listen from your phone. Hosted by yours truly Rodney "October" Dixon. Thanks and Blessings!
I was on Madison's student radio last night being interviewed about Palestine and poetry and I gave a shout out to you and Ms. Hyzer! Hope all is well. Peace.
Hi. i like you. I read your book again the other day. good words good works. texas is eating me alive, and i miss the north. hope things are well down california way.
i was actually considering doing that but they don't allow fire breathers on planes. In case we're terrorists or something. It's discrimination is what it is. I'm thinking of filing a complaint.
so i had this dream that you came to my college and performed and you were super famous and you were giving everyone autographs but you didn't really remember me! It was terrible. How have you been? I'm trying to get this slam club started at earlham. Pretty dope.
yo... sorry I didn't make it out for your farewell at montemarte. I wanted to let you know that I appreciate everything you've done around here... and that you better come back and visit!! :)
wishing you all the best at the slam... I wish I could be there bro, finances are a little tight but I'm thinking of the Madison team. Y'all will kill it!
Healey... I checked with work and I won't be able to get to Madison until that Friday of finals on the 7th because we are doing some things for 8th graders transitioning to high school...so you gotta make it to the finals, deal?
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