Take a Stand, Art Against Hate Anthology comes at a critical time in our nation’s cultural discourse surrounding intersections of identity, resistance, and looking at the past to forge a path forward. This collection spans form, tone, and theme without feeling cluttered; you find yourself reading something new while experiencing the same emotions many of us have come to find all too familiar. Thought-provoking and heart-wrenching, this collection—which boasts the words of Danez Smith and the art of Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun and Doug Johnson—flows seamlessly from poetry to visual art, creating an anthology that is not only a commanding and introspective read, but a necessary one. —Larry Reid, Curator, Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery

The poems and stories in this anthology, Take a Stand: Art Against Hate, offer necessary anecdotes against hate. How to combat what has uprisen. It takes effort to confront it. These pieces are protest against violence, injustice, cruelty. They are resistance. They are inscription, instruction, witness, warning, remedy, solution, even solace. They document what has been experienced … Hatred whittles into a person and makes them only part of themselves …The expansion of prejudice and intolerance seems to be more than it used to be. Maybe it only has come out of hiding. This anthology is relief. As did Abel’s blood, these poems, stories and illustrations, cry out from the ground. —Diane Glancy, from her foreword, a past winner of the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry

We can regard Take a Stand: Art Against Hate as a print-form peace march, an ongoing campaign for justice for all of the struggles embodied in these writings and depicted in the photos and artwork included here. This is a deeply democratic anthology—standing alongside nationally prominent voices such as Jericho Brown, Lucille Clifton, Tess Gallagher, Ilya Kaminsky, Dunya Mikhail, Marge Piercy and Danez Smith, are luminaries renowned in this region and beyond, such as Kathleen Alcalá, Gary Copeland Lilley, Claudia Castro Luna, Melissa Kwasny, Priscilla Long, Tiffany Midge, and Gail Tremblay. Plus every other voice within this print collective, from every ethnicity and background—I see us all moving forward, holding aloft our banners and placards in a grand march across these pages, proclaiming the vision of a more just and peaceful society, sustaining connections with our origins and building a future in which, in the words of poet Ellery Akers, there could be “a swerve in a different direction.”   —Carolyne Wright, co-editor of Raising Lilly Ledbetter: Women Poets Occupy the Workspace