The 2025 Massachusetts Poetry Festival: Full Schedule

10:15am EDT

The Informal Formal: A Craft Reading

Saturday May 31, 2025 10:15am - 11:15am EDT

The Informal Formal: A Craft Reading explores new forms and how to determine a “right” form for the poem’s subject (even the “timeless” one.) Each of the readers will offer a selection of their work and discuss how the poems were shaped during the writing and revision process, with a focus on the “formal” choices made.

Speakers

Michael Mercurio

Director of Community Engagement, Faraday Publishing Company

A poet, editor, and occasional critic, Michael Mercurio lives and writes in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts. His poems, interviews, and reviews have been published or are forthcoming in Palette Poetry, Thrush, The Common, Cream City Review, Sierra (the magazine of the... Read More →

Desiree C. Bailey

Desiree C. Bailey is from Trinidad and Tobago, and Queens, NY. Her collection, What Noise Against the Cane, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and was named one of the Best Books of 2021 by the New York Public Library. Desiree is also the author of the fiction chapbook I... Read More →

Molly Akin

Executive Director, West Falmouth Library

Molly Akin (she/her) is a writer and nonprofit library director based on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. She has read in venues including the Emily Dickinson Museum, Wilder Words, Fine Arts Work Center, and New England Poetry Club. Molly is a 2023 recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural... Read More →

Tatiana Johnson-Boria

Tatiana Johnson-Boria (she/her) is the author of Nocturne in Joy (2023), winner of the 2024 Julia Ward Howe Book Prize in Poetry. As an educator, artist, facilitator, and mother, she uses her writing practice to dismantle racism, reckon with trauma, cultivate healing, and explore the complex magic of mothering. She has received fellowships and awa... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 10:15am - 11:15am EDT
Cinema Salem - Theater 1 1 E India Square Mall, Salem, MA 01970 USA

Reading

11:00am EDT

Poetry-Go-Round: Garage Poets

Saturday May 31, 2025 11:00am - 12:00pm EDT

Essex Street - Pedestrian Mall

For this session of the Poetry-Go-Round, come hear poets from the Stone Soup Open Mic Series, Anna Geoffroy, Rusty Barnes, and Andrea Donna, read their work.

Organized by Timothy Gager, the Poetry-Go-Round spotlights different poetry communities from the greater Boston and North Shore areas. We hope you'll join us to celebrate their work!

Speakers

Jason M. Rubin

Jason M. Rubin is the author of Ancient Tales Newly Told, a collection of two historical romance novellas—one set in 17th-century England, the other in Biblical Jerusalem and Sheba—and Villainy Ever After, an illustrated collection of classic fairy tales told by the villains. He is currently readying a collection of short fiction for publication in late summer/fall 2025. Based in Malden, Jason also contributes music criticism to a regional online arts magazine and teaches writing and... Read More →

Anna Geoffroy

Anna Geoffroy is a Massachusetts-based poet, propagandist, and pope (non-exclusive). She is the host of the live-to-tape Contro-Verse open mic in Malden and editor of the Holy Nonsense project. You’ll find her tragic optimism and revolutionary woes on stages around the state and a street post near you... Read More →

Rusty Barnes

Rusty Barnes grew up in rural northern Appalachia. He received his B.A. from Mansfield University of Pennsylvania and his M.F.A. from Emerson College. His fiction, poetry, and non-fiction have appeared in nearly three hundred journals and anthologies. Among his books are six poetry... Read More →

Andrea Donna

Andrea Donna has been living and writing in Somerville since 2019, and they haven't kicked her out yet. So unless and until that happens, she's very happy to be here with you.

Saturday May 31, 2025 11:00am - 12:00pm EDT
Essex Street - Pedestrian Mall

Reading

11:30am EDT

Goin’ Up Yonder: Religion in Black Poetics

Saturday May 31, 2025 11:30am - 12:30pm EDT

St. Peter's Church - Large Room

For many in the Black American community, religion played a large role in our upbringing. Whether we maintain our beliefs into adulthood, embrace a new faith, or abandon religion altogether, we may reckon with or otherwise allude to how that cultural context informed our lives through poetry. Four writers will read poems that include imagery, diction, and other aspects of religion. Then they will discuss among themselves and with the audience how these influences appear in and drive their work.

Speakers

Porsha Olayiwola

porsha olayiwola is an individual world poetry slam champion and the author of the collection i shimmer sometimes, too. olayiwola served as the third poet laureate for the city of Boston. She is a 2020 Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellow. olayiwola is the assistant professor of poetry at Emerson College. Her work can be found in or forthcoming from TriQuarterly magazine, black warrior... Read More →

Quintin Collins

Assistant Director, Solstice MFA Program

Quintin Collins (he/him) is a writer, assistant director of the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing Program, and a poetry editor for Salamander. He is the author of The Dandelion Speaks of Survival and Claim Tickets for Stolen People, selected by Marcus Jackson as winner of The Journal's 2020 Charles B. Wheeler Prize. Quintin's other awards and accolades include a Pushcart Prize, a BCALA Literary Award honor, a Mass Cultural Council grant, the 2019 Atlantis Award from the poet's billow, and Best of the Net nomination... Read More →

Matthew E. Henry

Matthew E. Henry (MEH) is the author of six collections, most recently said the Frog to the scorpion (Harbor Editions, 2024). He’s editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal, the creative nonfiction editor at Porcupine Literary, and an associate editor at Rise Up Review. The winner of the 2023 Solstice Literary Magazine Stephen Dunn Poetry Prize, MEH’s poetry and prose appears or is forthcoming in Anti-Heroin Chic, ASP Bulletin, Barren Magazine, The Florida Review, Had, Massachusetts Review, Mayday, Mom Egg Review, Ploughshares, Redivider, Shenandoah... Read More →

Sarah Kersey

Sarah Kersey (she/they) is a poet and X-ray technologist living in Boston. Her debut chapbook, Residence Time is published with Newfound. It is a finalist for the 2025 Eric Hoffer Book Award Medal Provocateur. They have received support from Tin House Workshop. In 2021, they were a finalist for the PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship. Sarah's work has appeared in The Rumpus, South Florida Po... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 11:30am - 12:30pm EDT
St. Peter's Church - Large Room 24 St Peter St Salem, MA 01970 USA

Reading

11:30am EDT

“On Being Ill:” The Challenges, and Opportunities, of Writing Chronic Illness

Saturday May 31, 2025 11:30am - 12:30pm EDT

Cinema Salem - Theater 1

In the throes of illness, language can be elusive. As Virginia Woolf put it, “English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no words for the shiver and the headache.” And yet, as Emily Dickinson noted, “After great pain, a formal feeling comes –.” In this group reading, four writers living with migraine, mental illness, Crohn’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and long Covid will share poetry engaging with the challenges—and opportunities—inherent in producing art both because of, and in spite of, chronic illness. Reflecting the myriad ways illness impacts body and mind, presenters will share lyric and narrative poetry as well as formally experimental and hybrid forms such as visual, concrete, found, erasure and prose poems culled from the archive as well as contemporary medical discourse. The work of several presenters also aims to expose, and interrogate, persistent and stereotypical attitudes toward those living with chronic, often invisible illnesses—especially women/women-identifying and BIPOC patients—that result in their pain and disability being minimized or discounted by the medical industrial complex. In addition to reading their work, presenters will discuss their writing processes and how they sustain a creative practice while living with chronic pain and/or disability. Presenters will explore not only the dis-ease of their wayward bodies and brains, but also the ways that the altered sensations, perception, cognition, and emotions of sickness can open new pathways for creative expression.

Speakers

Carolyn Oliver

Carolyn Oliver is the author of The Alcestis Machine (Acre, 2024); Inside the Storm I Want to Touch the Tremble (University of Utah Press, 2022), winner of the Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry; and three chapbooks, including, most recently, Night Ocean (Seven Kitchens Press, 2023), which was selected for the Rane Arroyo Series. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Poetry Daily, TriQuarterly, Ecotone, Copper Nickel, Image, Consequence, and elsewhere. She lives in Massachusetts... Read More →

Ann Wallace

Professor, New Jersey City University

Ann E. Wallace, PhD, is Poet Laureate Emeritus of Jersey City, New Jersey. As a long-time survivor of ovarian cancer, a woman with multiple sclerosis, and one of the nation's first Long Covid patients, she has lived and written through illness for more than thirty years. She has published... Read More →

Therese Gleason

Instructor, Clark University

Therese Gleason is author of three poetry chapbooks: Hemicrania (2024), about living with chronic migraine, selected for the Chestnut Review Chapbook Series; Matrilineal (Finishing Line Press, 2021), which received honorable mention for the 2022 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize from t... Read More →

Maria S. Picone/수영

Maria S. Picone/수영 is a queer Korean American adoptee who has three chapbooks: Anti Asian Bias, Adoptee Song (forthcoming Game Over Books), and This Tenuous Atmosphere (Conium). She has been published in Tahoma Literary Review, Reckoning, and others, including Best Small Fictions 2021. She won Salamander’s Louisa Solano Memorial Emerging Poet Prize, Cream City Review’s 2020 Poetry Prize, and support from The Kenyon Review, Juniper, Tin House... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 11:30am - 12:30pm EDT
Cinema Salem - Theater 1 1 E India Square Mall, Salem, MA 01970 USA

Reading

12:00pm EDT

Poetry-Go-Round: Virtual Dire Literary Series

Saturday May 31, 2025 12:00pm - 1:00pm EDT

Essex Street - Pedestrian Mall

For this session of the Poetry-Go-Round, come hear four poets, Timothy Gager, Tom Laughlin, Jennifer Martelli, and Kimberly Ann Priest from the Virtual Dire Literary Series read their work.

The Dire Literary Series started in Cambridge, Ma in 2001, ending in 2018, and returned the beginning of Covid as a Virtual Series. There have always been national and local features, with an open mic.

Organized by Timothy Gager, the Poetry-Go-Round spotlights different poetry communities from the greater Boston and North Shore areas. We hope you'll join us to celebrate their work!

Speakers

Timothy Gager

Timothy Gager has published 20 books of fiction and poetry, including his fourth novel, Shadows of the Seen, and his most recent book of poetry, Almost Bluing for X-Tra Whiteness. He hosted the successful Dire Literary Series in Cambridge, MA, from 2001 to 2018, and started a weekly virtual series in 2020. He has had over 1000 works of fiction and poetry published, 19 of which were nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His work has also been nominated for aMassa... Read More →

Jennifer Martelli

Co-Poetry Editor, Mom Egg Review

Jennifer Martelli has received fellowships from The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Monson Arts, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her work has appeared in The Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Poetry, Best of the Net Anthology, Braving the Body Anthology, Verse Daily... Read More →

Tom Laughlin

Creative Writing Program Coordinator, Middlesex Community College

Tom Laughlin is coordinator of the Creative Writing Program at Middlesex Community College in Massachusetts. His poetry has appeared in Green Mountains Review, Ibbetson Street, Drunk Monkeys, Main Street Rag, and elsewhere.His chapbook, The Rest of the Way, was published by Fini... Read More →

Kimberly Ann Priest

Kimberly Ann Priest is the winner of the 2024 Backwaters Prize in Poetry from the University ofNebraska Press for her book Wolves in Shells, as well as the author of tether & lung (TexasReview Press) and Slaughter the One Bird (Sundress Publications). A professor of first-yearwriting at Michigan State University, she lives with her husband in Maine... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 12:00pm - 1:00pm EDT
Essex Street - Pedestrian Mall

Reading

12:45pm EDT

Lyricism and Everyday Life

Saturday May 31, 2025 12:45pm - 1:45pm EDT

St. Peter's Church - Chapel

Join four poets with recent books as they read poems on everyday life and finding beauty in the banal. Isabel Duarte-Gray (author of Even Shorn, Sarabande 2021), Tawanda Mulalu (author of Please Make Me Pretty, I Don’t Want To Die, Princeton University Press 2022), Amanda Gunn (author of Things I Didn’t Do with This Body, Copper Canyon Press 2023), and Jess Yuan (author of Slow Render, Airlie 2024) will read from their collections and share new work. This reading features a variety of perspectives and lived experiences, exploring the intersection of the mundane and the profound, the ordinary and the extraordinary. How can a lyric speaker’s individual life relate to the daily lives of others? How can we weave together the real and surreal in writing through everyday experiences? Join us in celebrating the beauty of commonplace and communal moments with four poets’ original voices, tender vulnerability, and fresh thinking.

Speakers

Amanda Gunn

Amanda Gunn’s debut poetry collection, Things I Didn’t Do with This Body, was published by Copper Canyon Press. She is the recipient of the Auburn Witness Poetry Prize, The Missouri Review Editor’s Prize, and a Pushcart Prize, as well as fellowships from the Wallace Stegner Program at Stanford, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Rona Jaffe Foundati... Read More →

Jess Yuan

Jess Yuan (she/her) is a poet and architect. She is the author of Slow Render (2024), winner of the Airlie Prize, and Threshold Amnesia (2020), winner of the Yemassee Chapbook Contest. Jess has received fellowships from Kundiman and Miami Writers Institute, and her poems appear in Best New Poets, Tupelo Quarterly Review, jubilat, Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 12:45pm - 1:45pm EDT
St. Peter's Church - Chapel 24 St Peter St Salem, MA 01970 USA

Reading

12:45pm EDT

Poetry-Go-Round-Once!

Saturday May 31, 2025 12:45pm - 1:45pm EDT

St. Peter's Church - Large Room

Due to weather, the Poetry-Go-Round is moving! Join all speakers for a one-hour spectacular!

Speakers

Timothy Gager

Saturday May 31, 2025 12:45pm - 1:45pm EDT
St. Peter's Church - Large Room 24 St Peter St Salem, MA 01970 USA

Reading

12:45pm EDT

Poets in Conversation with Gender

Saturday May 31, 2025 12:45pm - 1:45pm EDT

Cinema Salem - Theater 1

Attacks at all levels of government and society continue to occur against LGBTQIA+ people, especially trans and gender nonconforming people with focus on people of color. We must stand up and speak out for ourselves, tell our stories, educate ourselves and others about intersectionality, and claim the full spectrum of our humanity. This presentation will be a safe space for people all along the gender spectrum.
This is a poetry reading and discussion from several well-published trans, queer, and nonbinary poets. Themes in their work include gender identity and transition, the joy of gender euphoria, the heartbreak of love and loss, memorializing the losses our community has faced, and building bridges between past and present. In this time of transphobia and fear, it is important to speak up in spaces like poetry festivals, where LGBTQ+ people and allies can connect and support one another.

Speakers

Lee Desrosiers

Publisher, Naugatuck River Review

Lee Desrosiers (they/them) is a queer, nonbinary poet with three full-length books of poetry: The Philosopher’s Daughter (2013), Sometimes I Hear the Clock Speak (2016), and Keeping Planes in the Air (2020) published by Salmon Poetry (Ireland). Two chapbooks, Inner Sky and Typi... Read More →

Steven Riel

Steven Riel (he/him) is the author of two full-length collections of poetry: Fellow Odd Fellow and Edgemere. His chapbook, Postcard from P-town, was published as runner-up for the inaugural Robin Becker Chapbook Prize. His poems have appeared in numerous periodicals, including The Minnesota Review and International Poetry Review. He edits the Franco-American journal Résonance. Recipient of a grant from the Massachusetts... Read More →

Jendi Reiter

Editor in Chief, Winning Writers

Jendi Reiter (they/he) is the author of the novels Origin Story (Saddle Road Press, 2024) and Two Natures (Saddle Road Press, 2016), the short story collection An Incomplete List of My Wishes (Sunshot Press, 2018), and five poetry books and chapbooks, most recently Made Man (Litt... Read More →

Subhaga Crystal Bacon

Subhaga Crystal Bacon (they/them), is the author of five collections of poetry including: A Brief History of My Sex Life, forthcoming from Lily Poetry Review Books; the Lambda Literary finalist, Transitory, 2023, winner of the BOA Editions, Ltd. Isabella Gardner Award for Poetry... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 12:45pm - 1:45pm EDT
Cinema Salem - Theater 1 1 E India Square Mall, Salem, MA 01970 USA

Reading

1:00pm EDT

Poetry-Go-Round: Speak Up Open Mic

Saturday May 31, 2025 1:00pm - 2:00pm EDT

Essex Street - Pedestrian Mall

For this session of the Poetry-Go-Round, come hear four poets from the Speak Up Open Mic, Dave Somerset. Robert Whalen, Elizabeth Gordon McKim and Jack Giaour, read their work.

Speak Up Spoken Work Open Mic has been meeting every Wednesday at the Walnut Street Cafe in Lynn for well over a decade. Hosted by David Somerset.

Organized by Timothy Gager, the Poetry-Go-Round spotlights different poetry communities from the greater Boston and North Shore areas. We hope you'll join us to celebrate their work!

Speakers

Dave Somerset

Owner, Call Dave IT Services

Love poetry, music, visual and performing arts.

Robert Whelen

Host

Robert Whelan is the Poet Laureate of Rockport, MA. He is widely published in anthologies and journals in the US, Europe, and Asia. His poems have been translated into multiple languages. In 2022, Bob was awarded a Silver Medal at the Noussa International Poetry Festival in Noussa... Read More →

Elizabeth Gordon McKim

Elizabeth Gordon McKim has published five books of poetry, the latest being The Red Thread (Leapfrog Press). She is a teacher, performance poet, spoken word artist, and has been an adjunct professor for forty years in the department of Creative Arts in Learning at Lesley University. McKim is the Poet Laureate of the European Graduate School and the Jazz Poet of Lynn, where... Read More →

Jack Giaour

Jack Giaour's (he/him/his) poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in various literary journals, including Nixes Mate Review, the Sonora Review, and 14 Hills. He holds an MFA from Chapman University, was a writer-in-residence at the Belgrade Art Studio in Belgrade, Serbia, and has volunteered... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 1:00pm - 2:00pm EDT
Essex Street - Pedestrian Mall

Reading

2:00pm EDT

Grief and Resilience: Poetry Navigating Loss

Saturday May 31, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT

PEM - Groups Hub

This session brings together six poets from Massachusetts to reflect on the topic of grief and resilience. Each poet will consider a question related to the role that writing poetry has played in helping them either to share personal experiences of grief or the wider grief and brokenness in the world. They will also explore how generating poems may have helped them to move toward some degree of resilience, if not resolution or acceptance of a loss.

Speakers

Ellen Steinbaum

Poet, Journalist, Blogger

Ellen Steinbaum’s most recent book, Leavings, was published in August 2024. She is the author of four previous poetry collections and a one-person play. Her work has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and is included in several anthologies, including The Widows’ H... Read More →

Wendy Drexler

Wendy Drexler is a recipient of a 2022 artist fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her fourth collection, Notes from the Column of Memory, was published by Terrapin Books in September 2022. Previous collections include Before There Was Before (Iris Press, 2017). Her poems have appeared in Barrow Street, J Journal, Lily Poetry Review, Nimrod, Pangyrus, Prairie Schooner, Salamander, Solstice, South Florida Poetry Review, The Mid-American Review, The Hudson Review, The Sun, and The Threepenny Review, among others. Her work has... Read More →

Ann Bookman

Senior Fellow, McCormack Graduate School, University of Massachusets Boston

Ann Bookman, a recent Pushcart Prize nominee, has published poems in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Soul-Lit: A Journal of Spiritual Poetry, Chronogram, and Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose, among others. In 2012, she published a chapbook, Point of Attachment, with Finishing Lin... Read More →

Oliver de la Paz

Oliver de la Paz is the Poet Laureate of Worcester, MA for 2023-2025. He is the author and editor of seven books: Names Above Houses; Furious Lullaby; Requiem for the Orchard; Post Subject: A Fable; and The Boy in the Labyrinth, a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award in P... Read More →

Steven Ratiner

Steven Ratiner is a poet, essayist, editor, and educator. He is the Poet Laureate Emeritus for Arlington, MA, and was recently elected president of the New England Poetry Club, one of the oldest literary associations in America.His new poetry collection, Grief’s Apostrophe, has just been issued by Beltway Editions. He’s previously published three poetry chapbooks and been included in numerous anthologies. His writing frequently appears in journals in America and abroad, including Parnassus, Agni, Hanging Loose, Poet Lore, Salamander, QRLS (Singapore... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT
PEM - Groups Hub 32 Derby Square Salem, MA 01970 USA

Reading

2:00pm EDT

Maiden, Mother, Crone: A Reading Celebrating 22 Years of MER - Mom Egg Review

Saturday May 31, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT

Cinema Salem - Theater 1

A reading focused on the “ages and stages” of motherhood. Children go through changes, and mothers adapt to these while experiencing their own growth, evolution, and exigencies. The readers, all Massachusetts-based or New England poets who have been published in MER, will share their thoughtful, nuanced, and often surprising poems on the various stages of motherhood and women's lives.

Speakers

Cindy Veach

Cindy Veach is the author of three full-length poetry collections: Monster Galaxy (MoonPath Press); Her Kind (CavanKerry Press) a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal; and Gloved Against Blood (CavanKerry Press) a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and a Massachusetts... Read More →

Kathleen Aguero

Kathleen Aguero’s latest book is World Happiness Index (Tiger Bark Press). She has published five volumes of poetry and edited three collections of multicultural literature for U of GA Press. She is also poetry faculty-at-large in the Solstice low-residency M.F.A. program at Lasell University, and teaches in Changing Lives Through Liter... Read More →

Carla Panciera

Carla Panciera’s poetry and prose have appeared in numerous journals, including Poetry, The New England Review, and RHINO. Her collection of short stories, Bewildered, received AWP’s Grace Paley Short Fiction Award in 2013 and was published by the University of Massachusetts... Read More →

Jennifer Barber

Jennifer Barber is the author of the collections Rigging the Wind (2003), Given Away (2012), Works on Paper (2016), and The Sliding Boat Our Bodies Made (2022). She is co-editor with Fred Marchant and Jessica Greenbaum of the anthology Tree Lines: 21st Century American Poems, and is the current Poet Laureate of Brookline, MA... Read More →

Joan Kwon Glass

Joan Kwon Glass is the mixed-race, Korean diasporic author of DAUGHTER OF THREE GONE KINGDOMS (winner of the 2024 Perugia Press Poetry Prize) & NIGHT SWIM (winner of the 2022 Diode Editions Book Award), as well as the chapbooks HOW TO MAKE PANCAKES FOR A DEAD BOY (Harbor Editions... Read More →

Marjorie Tesser

Editor in Chief, MER - Mom Egg Review

Marjorie Tesser is editor-in-chief of MER-Mom Egg Review. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, The Important Thing Is (Firewheel Chapbook Award winner) and The Magic Feather (FLP). Her poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in SWWIM, poets.org, Cutleaf, and others.Marjorie earned her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and received the 2019 John B. Santoianni Award from the Academy of American Poets. A former attorney, she has co-edited three anthologi... Read More →

Nadia Arioli

Nadia Arioli’s poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net three times and for the Pushcart Prize and can be found in Cider Press Review, Rust + Moth, As It Ought To Be, McNeese Review, Penn Review, Mom Egg, and elsewhere. Essays have been nominated for Best of the Net and the... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT
Cinema Salem - Theater 1 1 E India Square Mall, Salem, MA 01970 USA

Reading

2:00pm EDT

Poe(sí)a: Spoken Word in Spanglish

Saturday May 31, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT

St. Peter's Church - Large Room

Poe(sí)a is a multidisciplinary spoken word performance in Spanglish, immersing the audience in a journey of acceptance. Addressing themes of immigration, language & bilingualism, acculturation, and heritage through spoken word, vocal performance, and movement invites the audience to question their own experiences and mediums of expression. Alejandra is a Boston-based bilingual artist and educator from Mexico who works in the intersection of arts, education, and community engagement.

Speakers

Alejandra Ramos Gómez

Author and Spoken Word Poet

Alejandra Ramos Gómez (Nadxieelii) is a Boston-based multidisciplinary artist, cultural promoter, and educational consultant from the US-Mexico border. Imperfecta, her debut bilingual poetry collection by Alegría Publishing, explores the intersectionality of latent experiences as women and immigrants. Her work has appeared in international media, including Chachalaca Review, Ms. Magazine, NPR's Latino USA, Plan International, ReVista Harvard Review of Latin America, TEDx, UNICEF, and Visible Magazine.Alej... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT
St. Peter's Church - Large Room 24 St Peter St Salem, MA 01970 USA

Reading

2:00pm EDT

Poetry-Go-Round: Pour Me A Poem

Saturday May 31, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT

Essex Street - Pedestrian Mall

For this session of the Poetry-Go-Round, come hear four poets from the Pour me a Poem open mic series, Sara Letourneau, Wayne-Daniel Berard, Tess Gordon, and Brian Mosher, read their work.

Pour Me a Poem is a monthly poetry open mic and feature poet series, meeting at Wayne-Daniel Berard's home in Mansfield, MA, on the second Thursday of every month at 7:00 p.m. Eastern. It was founded by Wayne-Daniel Berard and Sara Letourneau in September 2022.

Organized by Timothy Gager, the Poetry-Go-Round spotlights different poetry communities from the greater Boston and North Shore areas. We hope you'll join us to celebrate their work!

Speakers

Sara Letourneau

Heart of the Story Editorial & Coaching Services

Sara Letourneau is the author of Wild Gardens (Kelsay Books, 2024); the book editor and writing coach at Heart of the Story Editorial & Coaching Services; and the co-editor of the Pour Me a Poem Anthology. Her poetry has won the Beals Prize for Poetry and the Blue Institute’s 2020 Words on Water contest. Her most recent work... Read More →

Wayne-Daniel Berard

Co-founder, co-host, Pour Me a Poem

Wayne-Daniel Berard, PhD, is an educator, poet, writer, shaman, sage, and proud Gryffindor. Author of eighteen published books, his latest is Poetry Mage (Metaphysical Fox Press). Wayne-Daniel lives in Mansfield, MA, with his wife, the Lovely Christine, where he co-hosts with Sara Letourneau the monthly open mic and feature event Pour Me a Poem... Read More →

Brian Mosher

Brian Mosher’s work has appeared in Literary Underground, Tidings, Blue Villa, Nixes Mate, eMerge, Books and Pieces, Confetti, Coneflower Cafe, and Esoterica, among other places.He has self-published three books: One Bad Day Deserves Another (short stories), Moon Shine and Lemo... Read More →

Tess Gordon

Tess Gordon is a rising poet from the Boston area, weaving personal experiences into emotionally rich storytelling. While pursuing a degree in clinical psychology, she finds solace and expression in creative writing, allowing poetry to serve as both an outlet and a bridge to her readers... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT
Essex Street - Pedestrian Mall

Reading

2:00pm EDT

We The Gathered Heat: A Reading of Asian American & Pacific Islander Poetry

Saturday May 31, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT

PEM - Morse Auditorium

To celebrate the recent release of the newest anthology, “We The Gathered Heat: Asian American and Pacific Islander Poetry, Performance, and Spoken Word (Haymarket Books, 2024),” this reading will highlight 7 contributors from the anthology who all have New England ties. This anthology, and this reading, will feature some of the brightest voices in contemporary American poetry who challenge, expand, and illuminate the meaning of the label “Asian American and Pacific Islander” in today’s world.

Too often, Pacific Islanders and Asian Americans are squeezed into the same story. The poets gathered in this anthology, and the lineages they represent, exceed this sameness. May this anthology, and reading, uplift complexities and incite transformation and joy.

Speakers

Franny Choi

Their books include: The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On (Ecco, 2022), a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; Soft Science (Alice James Books, 2019); and Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014). Franny’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. Franny is the current Poet Laureate of Northampton, MA, and the founder of Brew & Forge. She has two books forthcoming: a collection of essays about... Read More →

Usman Hameedi

Usman Hameedi is a Pakistani-American scientist, poet, and educator. He also serves on Mass Poetry’s Board of Directors. Since 2008, he has competed in and coached for collegiate, national, and international-level poetry slams. Usman has been featured in The Huffington Post, Intima... Read More →

Joshua Nguyen

Joshua Nguyen is the author of Come Clean (University of Wisconsin Press) and the author of the chapbooks, American Lục Bát for My Mother (Bull City Press) and Hidden Labor & The Naked Body (Sundress Publications). He is a Vietnamese American writer, a collegiate national poetry slam champion (CUPSI), and a native Houstonian. He is a humor editor for The Offing Mag and is a professional dish-dryer. He received his MFA/PhD from the University of Mississippi and currently teaches at Tufts University... Read More →

Chrysanthemum

Chrysanthemum is a poet and performance artist in Rhode Island, where she serves as co-director of the Providence Poetry Slam. She is currently Writer-in-Residence for the Providence Commemoration Lab. She has received fellowships from Poetry Foundation, Kundiman, Rhode Island Foundation... Read More →

Giles Li

Giles Li has had a career in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors for more than 25 years. He also has been a poet, performer, and cultural organizer.

Juliana Chang

Juliana Chang is a Taiwanese American poet. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, The Chestnut Review, diode poetry journal, Best New Poets 2023, and other publications. Juliana's first full-length collection, So Long This Wound Stayed Open, was published with ELJ Editions in 2024... Read More →

Matthew Olzmann

Matthew Olzmann is the author of Constellation Route, as well as two previous collections of poetry: Mezzanines and Contradictions in the Design. A recipient of fellowships from Kundiman, MacDowell, and the National Endowment for the Arts, Olzmann’s poems have appeared in The New York Times, Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prizes, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. He is an assistant professor at Dartmouth College and als... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT
PEM - Morse Auditorium 161 Essex St Salem, MA 01970 USA

Reading

3:00pm EDT

Poetry-Go-Round: Lily Poetry Series

Saturday May 31, 2025 3:00pm - 4:00pm EDT

Essex Street - Pedestrian Mall

For this session of the Poetry-Go-Round, come hear four poets from the Lily Poetry Series, Eileen Cleary, Gloria Monaghan, Annie Pluto, and Christine Jones, read their work.

Organized by Timothy Gager, the Poetry-Go-Round spotlights different poetry communities from the greater Boston and North Shore areas. We hope you'll join us to celebrate their work!

Speakers

Anne Elezabeth Pluto

Editor, Nixes Mate

Anne Elezabeth Pluto grew up in Brooklyn, NY, before it was cool. She is a professor of literature and theatre at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. A member of the Boston small press scene in the late 1980s, she’s one of the founders/editors at Nixes Mate Review/Nixes Mate Books... Read More →

Eileen Cleary

Eileen Cleary (she/her) is the author of Wild Pack of the Living (Nixes Mate, 2024), 2 a.m. with Keats (Nixes Mate, 2021) and Child Ward of the Commonwealth (Main Street Rag Press, 2019), which received an honorable mention for the Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize. She co-edite... Read More →

Gloria Monaghan

Professor, Wentworth institute of technology

Gloria Monaghan is a professor at Wentworth University. She has published seven collections of poetry. Her seventh book, Diary of Saint Marion (Lily Poetry Review, 2025), is featured at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (2025, AWP). Her poems have appeared in Nixes Mate, NPR, Poem-a-Day, Lily Poetry Review, Mom Egg Review, Quartet, and River Heron, among others. She has been nominated twice for the... Read More →

Christine Jones

Christine Jones lives in Orleans, MA, and is the author of Now Calls Me Daughter (Nixes Mate Review, 2022) and Girl Without a Shirt (Finishing Line Press, 2020). She is co-editor of the anthology, Voices Amidst the Virus: Poets Respond to the Pandemic (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 3:00pm - 4:00pm EDT
Essex Street - Pedestrian Mall

Reading

3:15pm EDT

Science in Poetry | Poetry in Science

Saturday May 31, 2025 3:15pm - 4:15pm EDT

National Park Service - Auditorium

Physics, astronomy, biology, earth sciences, and poetry all strive to understand life's mysteries. Four prize-winning poets will read from their newest books and discuss the ways literary writers incorporate science theories in their work. The audience is invited to join the discussion! Handouts with writing prompts and resources will be provided.

Speakers

Jackie Craven

Jackie Craven is the author of WHISH, winner of the 2024 poetry award from Press 53. Other titles include Secret Formulas & Techniques of the Masters (Brick Road Poetry Press) and prize-winning chapbooks from Headmistress Press and Omnidawn. Her poems have appeared in AGNI, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Cincinnati Review, The Massachusetts Review, New Ohio Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Poet Lore, Salamander, and many other journals... Read More →

Maggie Greaves

Maggie Greaves is a poetry scholar and poet from Atlanta, GA. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in such magazines as North American Review, Literary Matters, Third Coast, and Spoon River Poetry Review, and she has been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes. Her scholarship... Read More →

Barbara Ungar

Barbara Ungar is the author of six books, most recently, After Naming the Animals, published by The Word Works, which also published Immortal Medusa, and Charlotte Brontë, You Ruined My Life. Prior books include Save Our Ship, which won the Snyder Prize from Ashland Poetry Pres... Read More →

Sarah Giragosian

Sarah Giragosian is the author of Queer Fish, winner of the American Poetry Journal Book Prize and The Death Spiral. In 2023, the University of Akron Press released the craft anthology, Marbles on the Floor: How to Assemble a Book of Poems, which she co-edited. She also wrote Mot... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 3:15pm - 4:15pm EDT
National Park Service - Auditorium 2 New Liberty St Salem, MA 01970 USA

Reading

3:15pm EDT

Watershed: Ecopoetry from the Gulf of Maine

Saturday May 31, 2025 3:15pm - 4:15pm EDT

PEM - Groups Hub

From Great White Shark to Jagged Ambush Bug, from Ladyslipper Orchid to Piping Plover, from Red Fox to Box Turtle, let’s celebrate the more-than-human beings we share New England’s shores, woods, and rivers with. The poems and being stories shared here are part of the forthcoming CAPE COD TO NOVA SCOTIA: ART, ECOLOGY, POETRY OF THE GULF OF MAINE (Storey Press, 2027) co-created by Samaa Abdurraqib, Elizabeth Bradfield, and Ian Ramsey. This “Feel Guide” will include work by Anne Sexton and Robert Lowell as well as newly-written poems by writers with ties to the region, such as Porsha Olayiwola, Chen Chen, Anna V. Q. Ross, and more. The Gulf of Maine includes cities like Boston and Portland, parks like the Cape Cod National Seashore and Acadia, and countless other wonders. Join us in a celebration of this beautiful ecoregion and the ways that poetry can give voice to the wonders of science and connection.

Speakers

Elizabeth Bradfield

Poetry, Brandeis U, Western Colorado U

Elizabeth Bradfield’s seven books include: SOFAR: Poems, which includes poems that appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Sun, and Orion; Interpretive Work, which won the Audre Lorde Prize in Lesbian Poetry; Toward Antarctica; and the co-created Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecol... Read More →

Ian Ramsey

Director of Kauffmann Program for Environmental Writing, North Yarmouth Academy

Ian Ramsey is the author of Hackable Animal, finalist for the Prism Climate Prize. His writing has been featured in Terrain.org, Orion, High Desert Journal, and many other journals, as well as in collections like The Gift of Animals, Writing for Peace, and Maine Voices.Based in Maine, Ian is the founding director of the Kauffma... Read More →

Samaa Abdurraqib

Samaa Abdurraqib lives in Wabanaki Territory (Maine), close to the ocean and the mountains. Recently, her work can be found in Obsidian: Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora, Writing the Land: Streamlines, and Cider Press Review. She was a finalist for the 2022 Maine Write... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 3:15pm - 4:15pm EDT
PEM - Groups Hub 32 Derby Square Salem, MA 01970 USA

Reading

4:00pm EDT

Poetry-Go-Round: Stone Soup

Saturday May 31, 2025 4:00pm - 5:00pm EDT

Essex Street - Pedestrian Mall

For this session of the Poetry-Go-Round, come hear four poets from Stone Soup, Chad Parenteau, Toni Bee, Dexter Roberts and James Van Looy, read their work.

Organized by Timothy Gager, the Poetry-Go-Round spotlights different poetry communities from the greater Boston and North Shore areas. We hope you'll join us to celebrate their work!

Speakers

Chad Parenteau

Chad Parenteau hosts Boston's long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His latest collection is The Collapsed Bookshelf. His poetry has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Ibbetson Street, Pocket Lint, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, The Skinny Poetry Journal, The New Verse News, The Rye Whiskey Review, Nixes Mate Review, and anthologies such as... Read More →

Toni Bee

Poet / Curator/ Event Host/ Founder / StoryTeller, tonibee.org

Toni Bee is a poet, educator, and photographer raised in Boston, MA, educated in Roxbury. She was elected Poet Populist of Cambridge—the first woman to grace that position. Toni is also the Inaugural Cambridge Poetry Ambassador and was a teaching artist and storyteller at The Wang... Read More →

Dexter Roberts

James Van Looy

Saturday May 31, 2025 4:00pm - 5:00pm EDT
Essex Street - Pedestrian Mall

Reading

4:30pm EDT

American Tyrant: Poetry in the Age of Democratic Fragility

Saturday May 31, 2025 4:30pm - 5:30pm EDT

St. Peter's Church - Large Room

As political rhetoric intensifies and actions threaten democratic norms, poets are uniquely positioned to illuminate the subtle yet serious dangers of authoritarianism. In this compelling reading and discussion, four poets explore poetry’s power in confronting the erosion of democracy, amplifying marginalized voices, and demanding vigilance.

Two panelists bring firsthand experience of living under or writing about authoritarian regimes, offering urgent perspectives on oppression and resistance. The others address the struggles of communities disproportionately affected by today’s political landscape in America, where systemic inequities and rising extremism pose real threats to civil liberties.

Through their poetry, these writers examine how language can expose and challenge power, serving as both a mirror to society and a force for advocacy. They will discuss poetry’s role in bearing witness, preserving truth, and mobilizing collective awareness in moments of democratic fragility.

This event invites audiences to consider how poetry not only documents history but also intervenes in it, reminding us that in times of crisis, poets are both chroniclers and catalysts for change.

Speakers

Enzo Silon Surin

Author, Poet, Educator, Publisher, Social Advocate, Enzo Surin INK

Enzo Silon Surin is a Haitian-born, award-winning poet, educator, publisher, and social advocate whose work explores the intersections of identity, belonging, and historical reckoning. He is the author of American Scapegoat, When My Body Was a Clinched Fist (Massachusetts Book Award winner), and a forthcoming collection of essays confronting the illusion of freedom in modern America. His poetry has been featured by The Poetry Foundation, The Academy of American Poets, and Transition Magazine.A recipient of grants and fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and The Boston F... Read More →

Cortney Lamar Charleston

Cortney Lamar Charleston is the author of three poetry collections: It’s Important I Remember (Curbstone Books/Northwestern University Press, 2026); Doppelgangbanger (Haymarket Books, 2021); and Telepathologies (Saturnalia Books, 2017), selected by D.A. Powell for the 2016 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. His awards and honors include a Pushcart Prize and a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, as well as fellowships from Cave Canem and the New Jerse... Read More →

Suzanne Frischkorn

Suzanne Frischkorn is the author of four poetry collections, including Whipsaw (Anhinga Press, 2024), a Eugene Paul Nassar Poetry Prize Finalist, as well as five chapbooks. She’s the recipient of The Writer’s Center Emerging Writers Fellowship for her book, Lit Windowpane, the Aldrich Poetry Award for her chapbook Spring Tide, selected by Mary Oliver, and a Connecticut Individual Artist Fellowship. Her poems have recently appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Denver Quarterly, North American Review, Salamander, and Latino Poetry: A Library of America... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 4:30pm - 5:30pm EDT
St. Peter's Church - Large Room 24 St Peter St Salem, MA 01970 USA

Reading

4:30pm EDT

Ways of Be(long)ing

Saturday May 31, 2025 4:30pm - 5:30pm EDT

Cinema Salem - Theater 1

Five diverse Barrow Street authors participate in a round robin reading of poems about the complexities of identity. What does it mean to identify as a woman, a gay man, an Asian American, or Latinx? How do our identities intersect with our poetry and each other? Our poems range from speculative feminist dystopian to queer philosophical investigations to the exploration of cultural borders to a Latinx lyrics to identity, violence, sexuality, and the power of witness. A discussion will ensue.

Speakers

Carrie Bennett

Boston University

Carrie Bennett is the author of four poetry books, most recently The Mouth Is Also a Compass, winner of the Barrow Street Poetry Prize. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and currently teaches writing at Boston University. She is a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellow and lives in Somerville, MA, with her family... Read More →

Kevin McLellan

Kevin McLellan is the author of: Sky. Pond. Mouth. (winner of the 2024 Granite State Poetry Prize selected by Alexandria Peary and a finalist for the Thom Gunn Award in Gay Poetry); in other words you/ (winner of the 2022 Hilary Tham Capital Collection selected by Timothy Liu); O... Read More →

Pui Ying Wong

Pui Ying Wong’s recent book of poetry, Fanling In October, won the Barrow Street Editors' Prize. She is also the author of three other poetry collections: The Feast, An Emigrant’s Winter, and Yellow Plum Season, along with two chapbooks: Sonnet For a New Country and Mementos... Read More →

Ruben Quesada

Program Director, Mercy Street Readings

Ruben Quesada is a Costa Rican-American poet and critic. His publications include poetry collections Brutal Companion (2024, Barrow Street Editors Prize) and Next Extinct Mammal (2011), chapbooks Jane/La Segua (2023) and Revelations (2018). As editor, he produced the award-winnin... Read More →

Timothy Liu

Timothy Liu's latest books of poems are Down Low and Lowdown: Bedside Bottom-Feeder Blues and Luminous Debris: New & Selected Legerdemain (1992-2017), both out from Barrow Street Books. New work is forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Georgia Review, and Ploughshares.He teaches... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 4:30pm - 5:30pm EDT
Cinema Salem - Theater 1 1 E India Square Mall, Salem, MA 01970 USA

Reading

11:30am EDT

A Conversation Among Poets

Sunday June 1, 2025 11:30am - 12:30pm EDT

National Park Service - Auditorium

Three esteemed poets will read selections from their work and then engage one another in a discussion about those poems, their creative processes, and the writing life.

Speakers

Richard Hoffman

Richard Hoffman has published five previous books of poetry: Without Paradise; Gold Star Road, winner of The Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize and the Sheila Motton Book Award from The New England Poetry Club; Emblem; Noon until Night, which received the 2018 Massachusetts Book Aw... Read More →

Robbie Gamble

Robbie Gamble (he/him) received an MFA in poetry from Lesley University. His poems and essays have appeared in DIALOGIST, Post Road, Pangyrus, Salamander, The Sun, and Tahoma Literary Review. His chapbook, A Can of Pinto Beans, published by Lily Poetry Review Press, was a finalis... Read More →

Dzvinia Orlowsky

Dzvinia Orlowsky is a Pushcart Prize poet, award-winning translator, and a founding editor of Four Way Books. She has authored seven poetry collections with Carnegie Mellon University Press, including Bad Harvest, a 2019 Massachusetts Book Award's Must Read in Poetry, and her mos... Read More →

Tatiana Johnson-Boria

Sunday June 1, 2025 11:30am - 12:30pm EDT
National Park Service - Auditorium 2 New Liberty St Salem, MA 01970 USA

Reading

2:00pm EDT

After Etel Adnan

Sunday June 1, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT

PEM - Groups Hub

An event of poets writing in conversation with each other as Arab women and as students of the oeuvre of Etel Adnan. What does it mean to write from the Lebanese and Palestinian diaspora during the time of the latest Arab Apocalypse so famously written about by Etel Adnan? Poets consider the earthly and the cosmic and the urgent and the current and how this queer elder encompassed the nuance of her placement in history in a way that became an access point for her peers as well as the writers that came next.

Speakers

Summer Farah

Summer Farah is a Palestinian American writer, editor, and zine-maker from California. She is the author of I could die today and live again (Game Over Books, 2024) and The Hungering Years (Host Publications, 2026). A member of the Radius of Arab American Writers and the National Book Critics Circle, she is calling on you to recommit yourself to the liberation of the Palestinian people each day... Read More →

jess rizkallah

Jess Rizkallah is a Lebanese writer and visual artist. Her collection, the magic my body becomes, won the inaugural Etel Adnan Poetry Prize awarded by the Radius of Arab-American Writers. She was a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow. Her zines include IF LUV IS A CHEMICAL SO WHAT WHO CARES, and ANYWAY. Free Palestine... Read More →

Leena Aboutaleb

Copy Editor, Logic(s) Magazine

Leena Aboutaleb is an Egyptian and Palestinian writer who asks you to commit to the Palestinian liberation struggle. Her pamphlet, Expeditions of Projection, was released in 2023 (VIBE). She is a Brooklyn Poets fellow, a Kundiman fellow, and Tin House scholar. Read her work at ww... Read More →

Sunday June 1, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT
PEM - Groups Hub 32 Derby Square Salem, MA 01970 USA

Reading

2:00pm EDT

Here to Stay: Poetry and Prose from the Undocumented Diaspora Anthology Reading

Sunday June 1, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT

Cinema Salem - Theater 1

Experience the groundbreaking anthology "Here to Stay: Poetry and Prose from the Undocumented Diaspora" with performances by New England contributors Tobi Kassim, Wangeci Gitau-Damaskos, and Leticia Priebe Rocha. Highlighting the significant insights of undocumented poets, this brilliant compendium challenges misconceptions of what it means to live and write as an undocumented person in modern America. Deeply intimate, these works explore how to exist in the space between the familiar and the unknown, between the safety of silence and the desire to share. You don’t want to miss this rich and essential new chapter in the ongoing story of the eclectic immigrant experience and the United States itself.

Speakers

Tobi Kassim

Tobi Kassim was born in Ibadan, Nigeria, and has lived in the United States since 2003. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in The Volta, Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, The Kenyon Review, Chicago Review, The Rumpus, Four Way Review, and elsewhere. His chapbook... Read More →

Leticia Priebe Rocha

Leticia Priebe Rocha is the author of the chapbook In Lieu of Heartbreak, This is Like (Bottlecap Press, 2024) and was a contributor in Here to Stay: Poetry and Prose from the Undocumented Diaspora (Harper Perennial, 2024). Leticia earned her bachelor’s from Tufts University, where she was awarded the 2020 Academy of American Poets University & College Poetry Prize. Born in São Paulo, Brazil, she immigrated to Miami, FL, at the age of nine and currently resides in the Greater... Read More →

Wangeci Gitau

Wangeci Gitau (she/they) is a Kenyan-born writer, activist, and teacher from the Gikūyū tribe living in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Wangeci lives by Audre Lorde’s words, “your silence will not protect you.” Her writing and activism center around experiences taking up space in... Read More →

Sunday June 1, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT
Cinema Salem - Theater 1 1 E India Square Mall, Salem, MA 01970 USA

Reading

2:00pm EDT

Where Do You Live? in Arabic & English

Sunday June 1, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT

National Park Service - Auditorium

Come witness this lively and moving “correspondence in poetry” about war and friendship—based on the collaborative poetry collection Where do you live? أين‭ ‬تعيشين؟ (Arrowsmith Press) by Iraqi poet Hanaa Ahmad Jabr and American poet Jennifer Jean. The Center for Arabic Culture in Boston director, Alma Richeh, will perform Hanaa’s poems in Arabic while Jennifer will perform her own poems in English. They will be accompanied by a video produced by the Golden Thread Theater which features music and artwork created by the Her Story Is collective for this unique peace building project. Following the reading, Her Story Is founding member Amy Merrill will facilitate the Q&A.

Speakers

Amy Merrill

Amy Merrill is a playwright, a budding librettist, and an advocate for women artists. Her plays include: Winter Colors, Ardent Girls, A Cold Day in Summer, and Shoe Leather Epidemiology; as well as Camp Seagulls (co-written with Elham Nasser Al-Zabedy). She’s an organizer for t... Read More →

Jennifer Jean

Senior Program Manager, Fine Arts Work Center

Jennifer Jean’s poetry collections include VOZ, Object Lesson, and The Fool. Her resource book is Object Lesson: a Guide to Writing Poetry. Along with Iraqi poet Dr. Hanaa Ahmad Jabr, she's co-written and co-translated a correspondence in Arabic and English poems, titled Where ... Read More →

Alma Richeh

Alma Richeh was born in Damascus, Syria, and holds a law degree from Damascus University and an LL.M. degree in international legal studies from American University’s Washington College of Law in Washington, D.C. She has worked at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees... Read More →

Sunday June 1, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT
National Park Service - Auditorium 2 New Liberty St Salem, MA 01970 USA

Reading