#NLECommunity artist Sherese Francis (Jameco Exchange, 2015) has received a Community Arts Grant from Queens Council on the Arts for J. Expressions. 
J. Expressions is a pop-up bookstore project that promotes local authors and writers in Queens, specifically in the Jamaica, Southeast and South Central Queens areas. In collaboration with Cultural Collaborative Jamaica, the grant will be used to host a series of literary events in Jamaica, Queens, in the Fall in conjunction with a writing residency at Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning (JCAL). J. Expressions launched at  Other Worlds, a day-long program that featured traveling, creative and community-driven collections of books as part of NLE’s 2016 exhibition Jameco Exchange. The project has since popped up at Jamaica Market’s Harvest Festival and The Afrikan Poetry’s Theatre’s Kwanzaa celebration. Literary artists (authors, writers, book-making artists, illustrators, etc.) in the southeast Queens area are welcome to contact Sherese through her website if they would like to participate or collaborate.
Sherese Francis is a Queens-based published poet, writer and blogger of Futuristically Ancient, where she writes about the arts and cultures of the African Diaspora through an afro-futurist lens. She was recently the literary director of the Queens Book Festival. In addition to her blog and the festival, Sherese is working on a few other projects, including a fantasy novel called The E, based in Queens; the self-published chapbook Lucy’s Scroll-Bones; and a longer poetry manuscript.
Follow J.Expressions on Instagram @jexpressionsbookshop; Twitter @jexpressbooks and on Tumblr at Jexpressionsbookshop.tumblr.com.
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