Kara Laurene Pernicano reflects on their public humanities project, “Together Love Self: A Series of Poetic Meditations”, its implementation year, and the surprising discoveries, in community; the collective outpouring of self-love and compassion has invited greater attention to grounding and movement through trauma/memory studies.

, PhD Candidate in Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies at Stony Brook University, holds a MA in Literary and Cultural Studies from the University of Cincinnati and a MFA in Creative Writing and Literary Translation from Queens College, CUNY. Kara served as a Carceral Research and Teaching Fellow on the “Writing Beyond the Prison” Project and is a Humanities New York Grantee. As a creative scholar, Kara celebrates care work through community art projects.