LindoYes at his PawnShop book launch. (Photo by TJDDN; provided by LindoYes)

When I finally put out my first graphic novel, PawnShop, in July 2025, I saw something shift.

In the world I created within the book, care is the technology and healing is the default. And at my book release party, I watched poets and Blerds share the same room. I watched Black nerd culture and spoken word culture dance together.

Literally dance, talk, debate Afrofuturism, laugh, and build. Right then, I knew I did not want that moment to be a one-time thing.

I realized there was imagination being experienced among us, and I wanted to capture it and amplify it, so Poetry Blerds and Jams was born. 

Poetry Blerds and Jams, a.k.a. PB&J, is a spoken word comic con that celebrates Black imagination through poetry, sci-fi, and fantasy. It’s happening later this year, right here in Germantown, next to the row homes and corner stores that shaped how I see community.

These seeds have been growing in me for years, long before PB&J had a name, shaped by the places and people who taught me to imagine here. 

For 10-plus years as a professional poet, folks would come up to my merch table and ask when I was dropping a traditional poetry book. I never wanted that.

What I wanted was a comic book. As someone with dyslexia, images paired with words always made reading feel more possible. It lowered the barriers. It made the page feel like a place I could stay.

And because reading and writing are literally my profession, I had to build access for myself. I also wanted to build access for people like me.

That is how I fell deep into visual poetics. Pairing language with imagery. Letting the picture carry the rhythm, letting the rhythm carry the picture. It opened the door to the nerd joy I always wanted as a kid, reading comic books, and the nerd joy I kept as an adult, reading graphic novels.

For the next two to three months following my book launch, I pitched the idea of PB&J everywhere. I heard a lot of no’s. But then I got one yes from Rebekah Borucki, the head of Rowhouse Publishing.

That yes was not just money — it was confidence. It was someone saying they believed in my ability to organize something this big. I will be honest. I got scared. But I also got grateful.

Because I wanted to do something in Germantown that honored the festival-making culture that already lives here. From the Germantown Poetry Festival to the Germantown Arts Festival, this neighborhood knows how to practice radical hospitality.

The kind where the people who love the festival and the people who have never been to one get treated with the same care — the kind where community feels like mutual aid: Scrappy, resourceful, and rooted.

PB&J started as just a spark of an idea, but the excitement mobilized people. And in that movement, I realized I was not walking alone.

I had Enoch, our Program Coordinator, and Khalisah, our Outreach Coordinator, both also poets, who gave me enthusiasm when I was tired and clarity when I was wavering. They reminded me why I wanted this in the first place.

I wanted this because I want to see Black people celebrated for how we imagine. For how we build worlds in our heads and then let those worlds shape our real lives.

I want people to feel activated in their imagination, even if they do not call themselves a Blerd. From the person who only watched a few cartoons growing up to the person who reads Afrofuturist graphic novels every week but never claimed the title. From the casual sci-fi watcher to the poetry lover who is curious about all of it — PB&J is for them.

I also want people to know that comic cons can happen in the neighborhoods we recognize. Downtown is only a small slice of Philly. Most of Philly is row homes that keep us neighborly and corner stores that know your order by heart. 

That is why doing it at The Braid Mill matters. It feels like the neighborhood. It feels like us.

I want people who love sci-fi and fantasy to feel that Philly energy, that Germantown energy. I want to prove that Germantown can hold a comic con.

For the next few months, we are staying scrappy, organizing, and building something that is not just a one-day event. We want PB&J to be a practice — a way of living into Black Imagination every day.

So we are hosting events rooted in mutual aid and community outreach. We are building the Black Imagination Book Club for busy adults who need intentional time to read. Reading does not have to be solitary. It can be communal. Talking about what you read becomes both oral tradition and culture.

We are running teen book workshops because creative writing is not getting the enrichment it deserves in schools. Without imagination, it is hard to see beyond what exists. We want to nourish that. We want to give young people access to possibilities.

PB&J is not just a festival. It’s a way of organizing people around imagination as a daily practice.

We are excited to bring poets and Blerds into the same space — to celebrate Black Imagination and to enrich an already growing festival-making community in Germantown.

Whether you only watch a few sci-fi shows, or you read graphic novels every week, or you love poetry, or you are just curious, I want you to know that PB&J is for you.

Your wonder is enough. Your presence is enough. Your curiosity is enough. That sense of wonder is exactly what we want at this Comic Con.

And we hope the spark we build becomes waterproof. A flame called imagination that societal pressures and systems of oppression cannot extinguish.

Get your tickets now and be part of what we are building. A festival and celebration. But ultimately, a Comic Con in Germantown.

LindoYes (he/him) is a dyslexic spoken word poet, teaching artist, and community organizer from Philadelphia. His work fuses Black imagination, mental health, and sci‑fi across stage, page, and visual media. He has received major honors, including the 2023 Jackie Robinson Award from Color of Change and the 2023 Change Maker Award from Uptown Standards, and organizes Poetry Blerds and Jams while authoring the Afrofuturist graphic novel PawnShop.