Beginning in mid-2016, Agape Edition partnered with KHEL Charities to promote adult and young-adult literacy in underserved communities in the United States. KHEL is a philanthropic NGO based in India that works to help provide educational and employment opportunities to members of underserved and marginalized communities. For the past year, Agape Editions worked, with backing from KHEL, to execute a successful first year of our Poetic Equity program by reaching out to different schools and other non-profit institutions in geographically diverse regions of the US, all of which serve different demographics, in the hopes of achieving wide impact.

At the conclusion of Poetic Equity’s first year, Agape Editions has been able to donate copies of our print books to the following institutions:

Sojourn Services, a shelter in Santa Monica, California, that provides help to adult and child survivors of domestic violence and utilizes clinical art therapy as part of a comprehensive treatment program to help victims with their trauma.

Dream Center of Jackson, a shelter in Tennessee that provides safe harbor and assistance to women (including women with children) who have experienced loss of employment, housing, or family support, or other crises.

Boneshaker Books, a volunteer-run bookstore based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, dedicated to promoting social justice through programs such as their Women’s Prison Book Project (to which our Poetic Equity donation was allocated), which provides books to incarcerated women and transgender people across the United States.

Verdugo Hills High School, a nationally recognized magnet school in Tujunga-Sunland, California.

Special thanks goes to Hannah Bacchus, our research intern, and Bennet LeMaster, our staff director, for all the research, correspondence, and logistics work they put into setting up these donations.

We look forward to continuing to work with KHEL on the Poetic Equity program in years to come and welcome donations from Agape readers who are interested in supporting the program. Above all, we remain dedicated to increasing the accessibility of beauty and conversations about art and to building community through shared creative experience.

Fox Frazier-Foley created and manages Agape Editions. She is author of two prize-winning poetry collections: The Hydromantic Histories (Bright Hill Press, 2015), which was selected by Vermont Poet Laureate Chard deNiord as the recipient of the Bright Hill Press Poetry Award, and Exodus in X Minor (Sundress Publications, 2014). Fox edited the anthologies Political Punch: Contemporary Poems on the Politics of Identity (Sundress Publications, 2016) and Among Margins: Critical and Lyrical Writing on Aesthetics (Ricochet Editions, 2016). Her most recent collection, Like Ash in the Air After Something Has Burned, was just released by Hyacinth Girl Press.

Jena Groshek is an editorial intern at Agape Editions. Jena is currently a junior English major and business minor at Kalamazoo College, where she studies contemporary Irish and Scottish literature and intends to pursue a career in publishing. Jena is from Grand Haven, Michigan; in her spare time, she enjoys reading, writing, singing, and playing a few different musical instruments.