After a much-needed break in July to catch our breath, What The Universe Is: A Reading Series has returned with two gifted & prolific poets for the month of August:

Christopher Salerno is the author of five books of poetry. His new book, “The Man Grave,” won the Lexi Rudnitsky Award from Persea Books. Previous books include “Sun & Urn” (UGA Poetry Prize), “ATM” (Georgetown Poetry Prize), “Minimum Heroic” (Mississippi Review Poetry Prize), and “Whirligig”. His trade book, “How to Write Poetry: A Guided Journal,” is available from Calisto Media. His work has received the Glenna Luschei Award from Prairie Schooner, The Founders Prize from RHINO Magazine, the Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Award, the Laurel Review Chapbook Prize, and a New Jersey State Council on the Arts fellowship. His poems have appeared in New York Times Magazine, New Republic, American Poetry Review, New England Review, and elsewhere. He teaches in the M.F.A program at William Paterson University in New Jersey where he serves as Director of Writing Across the Curriculum.

Truth Thomas is a singer-songwriter and poet born in Knoxville, Tennessee and raised in Washington, D.C. He studied creative writing at Howard University under Dr. Tony Medina and earned his MFA in poetry at New England College. His collections include Party of Black, A Day of Presence, Bottle of Life and Speak Water, winner of the 2013 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry. Thomas has edited or co-edited a number of anthologies, including: Where We Stand: Poems of Black Resilience (Cherry Castle Publishing, 2022) and The Skinny Poetry Anthology (Cherry Castle Publishing, 2019). His poems have appeared in over 150 publications, including: Poetry Magazine, Ghost Fishing: An Eco-justice Poetry Anthology, and The 100 Best African American Poems (edited by Nikki Giovanni). He is the founder of Cherry Castle Publishing, creator of the “Skinny” poetry form, and the managing editor of The Skinny Poetry Journal.

Register for this reading at https://bit.ly/WTUI0818