The progressively spectacular art of the renowned Beehive Collective is coming to DC to join forces with the powerful social justice poetry of Mark Nowak. The theme of this blend of sight and sound display will address the true cost of coal and how regular people are challenging its impact.

The Beehive Collective is appreciated internationally for its educational graphics campaigns, at a regional level for its stone mosaic murals and apprentice program, and locally for its dedication to the revitalization of the old Machias Valley Grange Hall, a landmark building in their small, rural town. The Hive has been going and growing since 2000, at full speed! Their most recent campaign is exposing the cost industry’s strip mining injustices in the Appalachia.

Mark Nowak, Director of the Rose O’Neill Literary House at Washington College, will read from his recent book, Coal Mountain Elementary. A singular, genre-defying treatise from one of America’s most innovative political poets, Coal Mountain Elementary remixes verbatim testimony from the surviving Sago, WV miners and rescue teams, the American Coal Foundation’s curriculum for schoolchildren, and newspaper accounts of mining disasters in China with photographs of Chinese miners taken by renowned photojournalist Ian Teh.

This event is cosponsored by Foreign Policy In Focus, Split this Rock, and SALSA. A suggested donation of $5 would be appreciated for the travel and lodging expenses of the Beehive Collective but no one will be turned away for lack of funds. You can register for the event here.