Inventing Home: Poets on the Diaspora

Poets Marilyn Chin (Sage), Sahar Muradi (OCTOBERS), and Oliver de la Paz (The Diaspora Sonnets) read from their work and discuss how poems address ideas of displacement, exile, and what it means to carry “home” with you. Moderated by Hafizah Augustus Geter, Janklow & Nesbit.

Haunting Testimony

Poets LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs (Village), Rigoberto González (To the Boy Who Was Night), Sally Wen Mao (The Kingdom of Surfaces), and Courtney Faye Taylor (Concentrate) read from their work and discuss how the poem can serve as an archive of personal and political hauntings and history. Moderated by Ricardo Alberto Maldonado, Academy of American […]

New Works: A Poetry Reading

Poets Elisa M. Gonzalez (Grand Tour), Jen Levitt (So Long), and Airea D. Matthews (Bread and Circus) read from their new volumes of poetry. Introduced by Nikay Paredes, Academy of American Poets.

Poets on Love, Sex & Desire

Poets Richie Hofmann (A Hundred Lovers), Cyrée Jarelle Johnson (Slingshot), José Olivarez (Promises of Gold), and Maggie Millner (Couplets) read from their work and discuss desire, the sublime, and heartbreak. Moderated by Parker Menzimer, Poetry Society of America.

Choice, Chance, Escape (In Person)

Join up-and-coming indie publisher Awst Press for a celebratory reading showcasing Awst’s newest release Scenic Overlook, a stunning debut novel-in-stories by Brooklyn-based author Anne Ray. In addition to a warm reception, a lineup of Awst’s NYC-based authors will give readings exploring the hard choices, chance encounters, and new environments that forge our identities. Readers include […]

#YeahYouWrite (In Person)

#YeahYouWrite presents Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Chain-Gang All-Stars), Veronica G. Henry (The Foreign Exchange), Daniel Magariel (Walk the Darkness Down), Terese Svoboda (Dog on Fire), and James Frankie Thomas (Idlewild) in a friendly and relaxed yet high-energy atmosphere. Enjoy “The Bookend,” a Brooklyn-sourced #LiteraryCocktail (and take home the recipe), plus #LiteraryCocktails/Mocktails designed for each author’s work. […]

Lab[our] Issue Launch (In Person)

In partnership with the Brooklyn Book Festival, Lampblack invites you to share in the launch of our third volume: Lab[our]. Merchandise and copies of the issue will be available for purchase, along with drinks at the Center for Fiction café. There will be live readings from the magazine, featuring t’ai freedom ford, James Stewart III, […]

Annual Brooklyn Indie Party! (In Person)

On Friday night, Greenlight is delighted to once again partner with Community of Literary Magazines & Presses (CLMP), as well as some of Brooklyn’s best independent book and magazine publishers, to throw a Brooklyn-sized party celebrating the spirit of literary independence in our borough. Partygoers are invited to mingle with Brooklyn authors and publishers, discover […]

The New Voices of Arab American Literature (In Person)

In the contentious battleground of political America, Arab American writers have strived to drown out the divisive rhetoric through compelling, evocative portraits of life in the Arab world, diasporic ache, and subversion of embedded stereotypes. We meet with five Arab American writers to learn the narratives that guide their work, how they write and recollect […]

The Shining by Dorothea Lasky (In Person)

Dorothea Lasky’s The Shining is an ekphrastic horror lyric that shapes an entirely unique feminist psychological landscape. In this collection, Lasky guides us through the familiar rooms of the Overlook Hotel, both realized and imagined, inhabiting characters and spaces that have been somewhat flattened in Stephen King’s text or Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptations. Dorothea Lasky […]

Brooklyn Poets Reading Series (In Person & Virtual)

Named one of the best reading series in NYC by Time Out New York, the Brooklyn Poets Reading Series takes place six times a year at 144 Montague St and via Zoom. Each reading features three poets, with at least one from Brooklyn and one from outside the borough, pairing emerging with more established poets […]

Boog City’s Poetry Talk Talk (In Person)

Boog City’s Poetry Talk Talk Series has featured various pairs of poets reading and in conversation with one another over the past three decades. This time around we’re excited to feature longtime collaborators and friends Todd Colby and Joanna Penn Cooper. We’ll also have a music set from Todd and guitarist Nick Didkovsky. Young Ethel’s, […]

Gowanus Dawn Reading: 7th Annual Poetry in Canoes on the Gowanus Canal (In Person)

Our 7th annual Gowanus Dawn Reading – we’ll perform Robinson Jeffers’ poetry in canoes on the Gowanus Canal! Readers: 7:00 am report time at Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club’s Bunker Launch Site at 2 19th St, Brooklyn. Confirm spot as a canoe reader: Brad.Vogel[@]gmail.com. Audience: 7:45 am arrival. Watch and listen from 9th Street Bridge over […]

Chapbook Fellowship Winners Reading (In Person)

Join us for a reading at the Poetry Society of America to celebrate the publications of PSA Chapbook Fellowship winners Lauren Aliza Green (A Great Dark House), Emily Lee Luan (I Watch the Boughs), and Margaret Ray (Superstitions of the Mid-Atlantic). Poetry Society of America, 119 Smith Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201  https://poetrysociety.givecloud.co/product/57C27E3/reading-series

The Rumpus Presents Sapphic Storytelling: Queer eQuinox (In Person)

The Rumpus presents Sapphic Storytelling: Queer eQuinox at McNally Jackson’s Seaport location. Featuring authors Hannah Beresford, Jaquira Díaz, CJ Hauser, Lars Horn, T Kira Madden, and Kelley Van Dilla. Moderated by Rumpus Editor, Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn. In this series, we present writers we adore and use the term “sapphic” as a tongue-in-cheek term to […]

Exquisite Corpse Queens Edition (Virtual)

Eight Queens poets will come together virtually to create and perform an exquisite corpse poem on the theme of revelation as well as discuss Queens lit and community. Featuring allia abdullah-matta, Moncho Alvarado, Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond, Sherese Francis, Abeer Y. Hoque, Dena Igusti, nadia misir, and René Sing-Brooks. Hosted by the Lewis Latimer House Museum […]

Schomburg Center and NBF Presents: The Poetics of the Archive (In Person)

National Book Award Winners Nikky Finney (Head Off & Split) and Robin Coste Lewis (Voyage of the Sable Venus) excavate and reimagine family and historical archives as poetry in their recent books Love Child’s Hotbed of Occasional Poetry and To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness. The authors join National Book Award Winner Jacqueline Woodson (Brown […]

Crown Heights Literary Celebration (In Person)

Come celebrate the thriving Crown Heights literary scene with a reading and mingle hosted by three of the neighborhood’s most exciting arts organizations: The Franklin Park Reading Series, Big Words, Etc., and The World Trans Forum. Hear poetry and prose from local authors Tyriek White (We Are A Haunting), danilo machado (This is your receipt […]

John Oliver Killens Literary Salon: A Celebration of Black Fire This Time (In Person)

The Center for Black Literature, in collaboration with MoCada, will present the Killens Literary Salon with contributors to Black Fire This Time: Keisha-Gaye Anderson (Gathering the Waters), James E. Cherry (Edge of the Wind), Judy Juanita (De Facto Feminism), Quincy Troupe (Duende: Poems), and moderator Heather Buchanan (Aquarius Press). Black Fire This Time by Kim […]

A Poetry Reading with Nauset Press (In Person)

Three poets, Caitlin McDonnell, Carolyn Steinhoff, and Betsy Andrews (who will be accompanied by art and music), will read from their books of poems published by Nauset Press. Each in her own way, these poets grapple with what it means to write from within the impossibly ramped-up state of perpetual crisis in which we all […]

Powerful and Dangerous: the Legacy of Audre Lorde (Virtual)

The Alice Austen House, nationally designated site of LGBTQ+ history, will host a virtual reading celebrating the legacy of Audre Lorde’s teaching. Join us as former students Kathleen Walsh D’Arcy, Donna Masini, Melinda Goodman, and Rosette Capotorto read their poetry and share memories of their time in Lorde’s literature program. https://aliceausten.org

VOICE: A Lens to Black Experiences (Virtual)

Diversity is a call to arms, challenging society to be inclusive. The Black community is richly diverse, comprising many villages. We compare the teachings of forefathers from other places and grandmothers who’d migrated north or across oceans by choice. We are the ancestors in our lineage. We perceive the world differently and filter those experiences […]

World in Verse: An Evening of International Poetry (Virtual)

Join Words Without Borders for a virtual multilingual reading and celebration of international poetry in translation, in partnership with the Academy of American Poets. Featuring Mesándel Virtusio Arguelles, Kristine Ong Muslim, Iryna Shuvalova, Uilleam Blacker, Xavier Valcárcel, Roque Raquel Salas Rivera, and more, introduced by Arthur Sze (winner of the 2019 National Book Award for […]

The Role of the Artist in a Time of Crisis (In Person)

From Booker Prize-winning poet, novelist, essayist, short-story writer, anthologist, aphorist, and playwright Ben Okri & Africa Center CEO Uzodinma Iweala, comes a fascinating discussion on the role of the artist in a time of crisis. Whether it be climate change, the refugee crisis, racism, philosophy, the pandemic, or any number of varied topics he takes, […]

Yearnings of a Chat Bot: Are Poets the Original Chat Bots? (In Person)

The romantic ideation of the half human/half robot is one that we have been musing since computerized sentience in woman/man/creature form has graced our movies and tv shows: Terminator, Blade Runner, Ex-Machina, Metropolis, etc. This longing to understand the Machine-Man, the Maschinenmensch, comes from the fact that we have always had relationships with machines, from […]

Tables of Contents Reading Series (In Person)

Tables of Contents welcomes Isle McEIroy (People Collide), Jamel Brinkley (Witness), and Rachel Eliza Griffiths (Promise) for our September reading series! The evening will feature readings from each author paired with small dishes inspired by their work, followed by a conversation among the authors moderated by Tables of Contents chef and founder Evan Hanczor. Tickets […]

Origin Stories (In Person)

Origin Stories aren’t just for superheroes. This reading from St. Francis College MFA faculty and students will feature an exciting lineup of writers reflecting on their own origin stories as writers, as well as the origin stories of their writing. Writers, authors, and poets Clarence A. Haynes, Jive Poetic, Keyshawn Griffith, Marielena Gomez, Caroline Hagood, […]

We Speak Our Names: Lived Narratives (Virtual)

Join Poets Network & Exchange and the Bronx Book Fair for an intergenerational collective of powerful voices and performances by poets/spoken word performance artists Edward D. Currelley, Lorraine Currelley, and Caroline Reddy. Please register in advance in the Zoom link provided. https://www.facebook.com/BronxBookFair/

Exploring Literary South Street Seaport with the Walt Whitman Initiative! (In-Person)

5pm Seaport Walking Tour CANCELLED 5-6:30pm Enjoy extra Open House Hours at the WWI Tane Poetry Library! Enjoy a visit to WWI’s Tane Poetry Library, where Curator/Librarian Jay Sherry and Assistant Librarian Emerald Sanjuro will introduce the collection and our cozy reading space. WWI Tane Poetry Library at Fulton Stall Market, 91 South Street, New […]