What The Universe Is: Rita Banerjee and Amanda Shaw

Make some time for poetry during this shortest of months. Come hear two exceptional poets read for you on Zoom, so you don’t have to leave the house in these cold & dark days. Let these poets bring you light & warmth!  

Rita Banerjee is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Director of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She is author of Disobedient Futures, CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing, Echo in Four Beats, “A Night with Kali” in Approaching Footsteps, and Cracklers at Night, and co-writer of the documentary Burning Down the Louvre. Her work appears in Academy of American Poets, Poets & Writers, PANK, Nat. Brut., Hunger Mountain, Tupelo Quarterly, Isele, Vermont Public Radio, and elsewhere. She serves as Senior Editor of the South Asian Avant-Garde and Executive Creative Director of the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop. She received a Vermont Arts Council Creation Grant for her new memoir and manifesto on female cool, and one of the book’s opening chapters “Birth of Cool,” was a Notable Essay in the 2020 Best American Essays, and another chapter, “The Female Gaze,” was a Notable Essay in the 2023 Best American Essays. 

Amanda Shaw is the author of It Will Have Been So Beautiful (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2024). Based in Washington, DC, she is a teacher and editor at the World Bank and other international organizations. Her poems have appeared in LEON Literary Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, The Mid-Atlantic Review, and Lily Poetry Review, which she recently joined as the reviews editor. Over the last 25 years, she has taught students of all ages and backgrounds in New York, Boston, Detroit, and Rome, Italy. 

It’s very easy to register at bit.ly/WTUIFeb2025 — make sure you don’t miss out!

Join us for the January kick-off of What The Universe Is: A (Virtual) Reading Series with Bonita Lee Penn and Vievee Francis!

Bonita Lee Penn is the author of When the Trees Finally Testify (Get Fresh Books, 2024), Every Morning a Foot is Looking for My Neck (Central Square Press, 2019), and contributor to Where We Stand: Poems of Black Resilience (Cherry Castle Publishing, 2022). Her work has appeared in The Skinny Poetry Journal, The Massachusetts Review, JOINT. Literary Magazine, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and more. Bonita serves on the Board of the Sweetwater Center for the Arts and is a Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Fellow. She is the recipient of the Advancing Black Arts Grant from The Pittsburgh Foundation to produce her poetic stage performance, Gospel in the Wake (June 2025). Bonita also facilitates a poetry workshop with Madwomen in the Attic at Carlow University and is Managing Editor of the Soul Pitt Quarterly Magazine.

Vievee Francis is the author of: The Shared World (2023); Forest Primeval, winner of the 2017 Kingsley Tufts Award and the Hurston Wright Legacy Award; Horse in the Dark, winner of the Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize; and Blue-Tail Fly. Her work has appeared widely. Francis wrote the libretto for the transdisciplinary opera, The Ritual of Breath. She has received a 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2021 Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry and has also been the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Award and Kresge Fellowship. She is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College.

Registration is quick and easy at bit.ly/WTUIJan2025

As the 2024 season of What The Universe Is: A (Virtual) Reading Series comes to a conclusion, it gives me tremendous pleasure to host Carl Phillips and Erin Belieu, two of the foremost practitioners of poetry writing today, as well as two of the warmest and wittiest human beings I’ve ever encountered.

Carl Phillips is the author of 17 books of poetry, most recently Scattered Snows, to the North (2024) and Then the War: And Selected Poems 2007-2020, which won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize. His other honors include the 2021 Jackson Prize, the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, the Kingsley Tufts Award, a Lambda Literary Award, the PEN/USA Award for Poetry, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Library of Congress, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Academy of American Poets.

Phillips has also written three prose books, most recently My Trade is Mystery: Seven Meditations from a Life in Writing (Yale University Press, 2022); and he has translated the Philoctetes of Sophocles (Oxford University Press, 2004).

He lives on Cape Cod, in Massachusetts.

Erin Belieu’s poetry collection, Come-Hither Honeycomb, was published in February 2021.

Belieu's other poetry collections are Infanta, winner of the National Poetry Series, and chosen one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post, National Book Critics Circle, and Library Journal; One Above & One Below, winner of the Midland Author’s and Ohioana Poetry Prizes; Black Box, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Slant Six, which received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, and was named by the New York Times’s book critic’s one of their 10 Favorite Books of 2014. All of Belieu’s poetry collections are published by Copper Canyon Press.

Belieu’s poetry has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including the New Yorker, the New York Times, Poetry, Atlantic Monthly, Slate, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, the Academy of American Poet's Poem a Day, and the American Poetry Review. Her poems have been selected on multiple appearances in the Best American Poetry anthology series. Her prizes include the Rona Jaffe Foundation fellowship, and she was recently honored with the Barnes and Noble "Writers For Writers Award, recognizing Belieu’s long career of literary activism, as well as AWP’s George Garrett Prize, honoring her "outstanding literary citizenship” in service to the national writing community.

Belieu also founded the resistance network, Writers Resist, the organization that, in January 2016, hosted more than 100 simultaneous events in different cities worldwide to promote the tenets of democracy, diversity, and freedom of speech.

Belieu has been an educator for over 20 years, teaching workshops and literature courses at Boston University, Washington University, Kenyon College, Ohio University, and Florida State University. She is presently a full professor on the University of Houston's Creative Writing Program faculty. Belieu is also a frequent visiting faculty member for writing programs and conferences throughout the United States and abroad.

Registration is quick and easy at bit.ly/WTUIDec2024

November’s installment of What The Universe Is: A (Virtual) Reading Series is a celebration of the world I’m thankful for — a world in which incredibly smart, warm, and generous poets write books and share their work with the world. I hope you’ll come through and help constitute an appreciative audience for our poets.

E. Hughes is the author of the poetry collection Ankle-Deep in Pacific Water (Haymarket Books 2024). They received their MFA in poetry and MA in English Literature from the Litowitz Creative Writing Program at Northwestern University. Their poems have been published or are forthcoming in Guernica Magazine, Indiana Review, Gulf Coast Magazine, Colorado Review, and The Rumpus—among others. They are a Cave Canem fellow and were a semifinalist in the 2022 and 2023 92Y Discovery Contest, and longlisted for the 2021 Granum Fellowship Prize. Currently, Hughes is a PhD student in Philosophy at Emory University.   

Suzanne Frischkorn is a Cuban American poet and essayist. She is the author of four poetry books, most recently Whipsaw (Anhinga Press, 2024), and Fixed Star (JackLeg Press, 2022), 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 Denver Quarterly, North American Review, Salamander, South Dakota Review, and Latino Poetry: A Library of America Anthology. She is an editor at $–Poetry is Currency, and an assistant poetry editor for Terrain.org. 

Registration is easy and quick at bit.ly/WTUINov2024.

Our October offering features two exceptional poets whose work is searingly smart and lyrically lush. Come through to hear them read poems that will offer you new opportunities for experiencing the world.

SARAH AUDSLEY is the author of Landlock X (Texas Review Press, 2023). A Korean American adoptee, a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, and a member of The Starlings Collective, Audsley lives and works in northern Vermont. 

RITA MOOKERJEE is an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Worcester State University. She is the winner of the 2023 Steel Toe Books Poetry Award and the author of False Offering (JackLeg Press). A co-founder of Honey Literary, she serves as an editor at Split Lip Magazine and Sundress Publications. Her poems can be found in CALYX, Copper Nickel, Poet Lore, New Orleans Review, and The Offing. 

Registration is easy. Just go to bit.ly/WTUIOct2024

It is an absolute joy for me to be hosting Kenzie and Tiana for the August edition of What The Universe Is: A (Virtual) Reading Series, as they are poets who make full use of poetry’s ability to engage with complex questions of legacy, identity, and cultural survival, as well as the challenges inherent in transforming oneself to allow for growth, wisdom, and joy. Plus, they’re both absolutely delightful people.

Kenzie Allen is the author of Cloud Missives, forthcoming from Tin House on August 20, 2024. A poet and multimodal artist, she is the recipient of a 92NY Discovery Prize, the James Welch Prize for Indigenous Poets, the 49th Parallel Award, and broadside prizes from Littoral Press and Sundress Publications. Her work can be found in Narrative, POETRY, Poets.org, Boston Review, Best New Poets, and other venues. Born in West Texas, Kenzie currently works at York University in Toronto as an Assistant Professor in Indigenous Literatures and Creative Writing. She is a first-generation descendant of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. 

Tiana Clark is the author of the poetry collection, I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), winner of the 2017 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, and Equilibrium (Bull City Press, 2016), selected by Afaa Michael Weaver for the 2016 Frost Place Chapbook Competition. Clark is a winner for the 2020 Kate Tufts Discovery Award (Claremont Graduate University), a 2019 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, and the 2015 Rattle Poetry Prize. She is a recipient of the 2021-2022 Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship and 2019 Pushcart Prize. Clark is the 2017-2018 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing. She is the recipient of scholarships and fellowships to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Sewanee Writers' Conference, and Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Clark is a graduate of Vanderbilt University (M.F.A) and Tennessee State University (B.A.) where she studied Africana and Women's studies.

Her writing has appeared in or is forthcoming from The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Virginia Quarterly Review, Tin House Online, Kenyon Review, BuzzFeed News, American Poetry Review, Oxford American, The Best American Poetry 2022, and elsewhere. She teaches at the Sewanee School of Letters. She is the Grace Hazard Conkling Writer-in-Residence at Smith College.

Clark is currently working on her next two books, Begging to be Saved, a memoir-in-essays reckoning with Black burnout, millennial divorce, faith, art making, and what lies on the other side of survival; and Scorched Earth, a poetry collection, tracing the complexities of relationship beginnings and endings, loneliness, desire, and joy, which sold to Jenny Xu at Atria.

To register for this reading, just go to https://bit.ly/WTUIAug2024.

This one's gonna be a little different, with both Patty and Steven reading translations and departures. Patty will be bringing Tranströmer into English, and Steven will be jumping off of Rilke into a region unknown. Won't you join us? (You really should.)

Patty Crane is author of Bell I Wake To (Zone 3 Press First Book Award, 2019) and Something Flown (Concrete Wolf Chapbook Award, 2018), and translator of THE BLUE HOUSE: Collected Works of Tomas Tranströmer (Copper Canyon Press, 2023), winner of the 2024 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, and Bright Scythe (Sarabande Books, 2015), her selected translations of the Swedish Nobel laureate. Her poetry has appeared most recently in 32 Poems, Poetry Daily, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Vox. Her translations have recently appeared in American Poets, Poetry, Poetry East, and Five Points. Her work has been supported by fellowships from MacDowell and Hedgebrook. A third generation Cape Cod native, she divides her time between the hilltowns of western Massachusetts and the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. 

Steven Cramer’s seventh poetry collection is Departures from Rilke (Arrowsmith Press, 2023). His previous volume. Listen, (MadHat Press, 2020), was named a “must-read” by the Massachusetts Center for the Book. Previous books include Clangings (Sarabande Books, 2012) and Goodbye to the Orchard (Sarabande, 2004), winner of the Sheila Motton Prize from the New England Poetry Club and named a 2005 Massachusetts Honor Book. His work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and other journals. The recipient of two grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, he founded and now teaches in the Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Lesley University.

Registration is simple. Just go to https://bit.ly/WTUIJul2024 to get your Zoom link!

What The Universe Is: Quintin Collins and Michal “MJ” Jones

Join us for June’s installment of What The Universe Is — you don’t want to miss Quintin and MJ reading their phenomenal poems!

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, the 2019 Atlantis Award from the Poet's Billow, and Best of the Net nominations. Quintin’s website is https://www.qcollinswriter.com/

Michal ‘MJ’ Jones is a Lambda Literary nominated- poet in Oakland, CA. MJ serves as the Editor-In-Chief of Foglifter Press, a premier literary journal publishing trans and queer writers. Their poems have appeared in Anomaly, Kissing Dynamite, TriQuarterly Review, & RHINO Poetry, wildness. They received their MFA in Poetry from Mills College. They founded & facilitate Litany!, a workshop for a cohort of Black queer poets. They have a debut full-length poetry collection HOOD VACATIONS from Black Lawrence Press, and a chapbook, SOFT ARMOR, from Nomadic Press. Find them on the web at http://michal-jones.com

Registration is simple. Just go to https://bit.ly/WTUIJun2024 to get your Zoom link!

I have been counting down the days since booking Cynthia and Susan for this reading back in September of 2023, because both of them write poems that crackle with wit and thrum with bravery, and we’re all fortunate to have their work here in this world. Come through and get to know them!

Cynthia Manick is the author of No Sweet Without Brine (Amistad-HarperCollins, 2023), which received 5 stars from Roxane Gay, was named among the “Best Poetry of the Last Year” by Ms. Magazine, and was selected as a New York Public Library Best Book of 2023. She is the author of Brown Girl Polaris (a Belladonna chaplet), editor of The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry; winner of the Lascaux Prize in Collected Poetry; and author of Blue Hallelujahs. Manick has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, MacDowell, and Château de la Napoule among other foundations. For 10 years she curated Soul Sister Revue, a quarterly reading series that promoted poetry as storytelling and featured emerging poets, poet laureates, and Pultizer Prize winners. Her poem “Things I Carry into the World” was made into a film by Motionpoems and has debuted on Tidal for National Poetry Month. A storyteller and performer at literary festivals, libraries, universities, and museums, Manick’s work has also featured in VOICES, an audio play by Aja Monet and Eve Ensler’s V-Day, the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day Series, Brooklyn Rail, The Rumpus and other outlets. She currently serves on the editorial board of Alice James Books. She lives in New York but travels widely for poetry. 

Susan Rich is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Blue Atlas (April 2024) and Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems (2022). She has co-edited two prose anthologies including Demystifying the Manuscript: Essays and Interviews for Creating a Book of Poems (2023) and Strangest of Theatres: Poets Crossing Borders (2013). A recipient of a Times Literary Supplement Award, she has received fellowships from Artists Trust, 4Culture, Seattle King County, the Fulbright Foundation and Peace Corps Writers. Her poems have been published in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Alaska Quarterly Review, New England Review, The Slowdown, and elsewhere. Susan lives in Seattle, but is Massachusetts born and bred.

Registration is easy: bit.ly/WTUIMay2024

April isn’t just National Poetry Month; it’s also the opening of the baseball season, so we’re celebrating with two poets who love the sport:

Sandra Marchetti is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, Aisle 228 from Stephen F. Austin State University Press (2023) and Confluence from Sundress Publications (2015). She is also the author of four chapbooks of poetry and lyric essays. Sandra’s poetry appears widely in Poet Lore, Blackbird, Ecotone, Southwest Review, Subtropics, and elsewhere. Her essays can be found at The Rumpus, Whiskey Island, Mid-American Review, Barrelhouse, Pleiades, and other venues. Sandy is the former Poetry Editor at River Styx Magazine. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing—Poetry from George Mason University and now serves as the Assistant Director of Academic Support at Harper College in the Chicagoland area.  

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 Poetry. His newest work, The Diaspora Sonnets, is published by Liveright Press (2023). With Stacey Lynn Brown he co-edited A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry. Oliver serves as the co-chair of the Kundiman advisory board. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Poetry, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He has received grants from the NEA, NYFA, the Artist’s Trust, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and has been awarded multiple Pushcart Prizes. He teaches at the College of the Holy Cross and in the Low-Residency MFA Program at PLU.

Registration for this reading is quick and easy. Just click on https://bit.ly/WTUIApr2024 so you don’t miss out!

Come help ring in National Poetry Month with a special What The Universe Is! Readers Frank Paino and Robert Carr will be joined in conversation by fellow poet Nickole Brown, and all you have to do is register at bit.ly/WTUIPoetryMonth2024 to make sure you don’t miss it!

Frank Paino earned an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. His fourth book, Dark Octaves, won the Longleaf Press Book Prize and is forthcoming (Winter 2024). His chapbook, Pietà, won the Jacar Press Chapbook Prize and was published in 2023. Frank has received a Pushcart Prize, The Cleveland Arts Prize in Literature, and an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council. His poems have appeared in a variety of literary publications, including: Crab Orchard Review, Catamaran, North American Review, World Literature Today, Briar Cliff Review, Lake Effect, and a number of anthologies.

His website is: https://www.frankpaino.net

Robert Carr is the author of Amaranth, published by Indolent Books, and two full-length collections published by 3: A Taos Press – The Unbuttoned Eye and The Heavy of Human Clouds. His poetry appears in many journals and magazines including the Greensboro Review, the Massachusetts Review and Shenandoah. Forthcoming collections include Phallus Sprouting Leaves (winner of the 2024 Rane Arroyo Chapbook Series, Seven Kitchens Press) and Blue Memento, from Lily Poetry Review Books. 

You can find Robert online at https://www.robertcarr.org/

Special guest Nickole Brown received her MFA from the Vermont College, studied literature at Oxford University, and was the editorial assistant for the late Hunter S. Thompson. She worked at Sarabande Books for ten years. Her first collection, Sister, a novel-in-poems, was published in 2007 with a new edition reissued in 2018. Her second book, a biography-in-poems about her grandmother called Fanny Says, came out from BOA Editions in 2015 and won the Weatherford Award for Appalachian Poetry. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and the Kentucky Arts Council. In 2024, she’ll be the Writer-in-Residence at Hollins University, and she teaches every summer at the Sewanee School of Letters MFA Program. Currently, she’s the President of the Hellbender Gathering of Poets, an annual environmental literary festival set to launch in Black Mountain, NC, in October of 2025.

Nickole’s website is https://www.nickolebrown.org/

For the March installment of this series we’re journeying to Alaska, where we’ll find three extraordinary poets:

Erin Coughlin Hollowell is a poet and writer who lives at the end of the road in Homer, Alaska. Prior to landing in Alaska, she lived on both US coasts, in big cities and small towns, pursuing many different professions from tapestry weaving to arts administration. She is the author of Pause, Traveler (2013) and Every Atom (2018), both published by Boreal Books, and Corvus and Crater published by Salmon Poetry in 2023. Her work was featured in an exhibit at the Rasmuson Museum entitled Water Stories: Visual Poetics and Collective Voices by artist Andrea Wollensak. She has most recently been published in Poetry Ireland Review, Orion Magazine, Terrain.org, Rust + Moth, and featured on the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day website. 

Hollowell has been awarded two Rasmuson Foundation Individual Artist fellowships, a Connie Boochever Award, and an Alaska Literary Award. She has been appointed a 2022-2025 Black Earth Institute Fellow. In 2023, she was awarded a Contributions to Literacy in Alaska (CLIA) Award by the Alaska Center for the Book. She is the executive director of Storyknife Writers Retreat and director of the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference. 

Peggy Shumaker served as Alaska State Writer Laureate and as the Rasmuson Foundation's Distinguished Artist.  She received a poetry fellowship from the NEA. Shumaker is the author of eight books of poetry, including Cairn, new and selected. Her lyrical memoir is Just Breathe Normally. Professor emerita at University of Alaska Fairbanks, Shumaker taught for 20 years in the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA at PLU. She serves on the boards of Storyknife and the Raz-Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prizes. Shumaker edits Boreal Books (an imprint of Red Hen Press) and the Alaska Literary Series at University of Alaska Press, and is contributing editor for Alaska Quarterly Review and Cutthroat. She’s a panelist for the Alaska Literary Awards. Shumaker has a new book coming soon from Red Hen Press. 

Annie Wenstrup is a Dena’ina poet living in Fairbanks, Alaska. Her work recently appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, the New England Review, Poetry Magazine, Poetry Northwest, and Ran Off with the Star Bassoon,. Her writing is supported by an Alaska Literary Award, the Rasmusson Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Storyknife, and the CIRI Foundation. Annie has an MFA in Creative Writing from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine. In 2022 and 2023 she was an Inaugural and Returning Indigenous Nations Poets Fellow. Now Annie serves as the Alumni and Donor Relations Coordinator for Indigenous Nations Poets.

Get registered at https://bit.ly/WTUIMar2024

Join us on Thursday, February 15 at 7:30pm for the next installment of What The Universe Is: A (Virtual) Reading series, where you don’t need to go outside into the winter chill to get your poetry fix from two exceptional poets:

Josette Akresh-Gonzales is the author of Apocalypse on the Linoleum (Lily Poetry Review Press). Her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Southern Review, The Indianapolis Review, Atticus Review, JAMA, The Pinch, The Journal, Breakwater Review, PANK, and many other journals. A recent poem has been included in the anthology Choice Words (Haymarket). She co-founded the journal Clarion and was its editor for two years. Josette lives in the Boston area with her husband and two boys and rides her bike to work at a nonprofit medical publisher. Website: josettepoet.com. 

Carolina Hotchandani is the author of The Book Eaters, 2023 Perugia Press Prize Winner, which was one of the ten debut poetry books featured in Poets & Writers Magazine’s 2024 debut poets issue. Hotchandani’s poetry has appeared in The Atlantic, AGNI, Beloit Poetry Journal, Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, and various other journals. She is a Goodrich Assistant Professor of English in Omaha, Nebraska, where she lives with her husband and daughter. 

Registration is quick and easy at bit.ly/WTUIFeb2024

The 2024 season of What The Universe Is starts off with a big bang of a reading! This month’s quartet met in grad school at Warren Wilson and reconnected during COVID to support each other’s writing in the present moment. Let their affectionate camaraderie and exquisite poetry set the tone for the year to come!

Subhaga Crystal Bacon (she/they), is the author of four collections of poetry including Transitory, 2023, winner of the BOA Editions, Ltd. Isabella Gardner Award for Poetry; Surrender of Water in Hidden Places, winner of the Red Flag Poetry Chapbook Prize; Blue Hunger, from Methow Press, 2020, and Elegy with a Glass of Whiskey, winner of the A. Poulin New Poetry America Prize from BOA Editions in 2004.  A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, she’s a teaching artist working in schools and libraries with youth and adults, as well as private students. Her work appears in a variety of print and online journals including The Diode Poetry Journal, The Bellevue Literary Review, Indianapolis Review, Smartish Pace, and others.  A Queer elder, she lives in rural northcentral Washington on unceded Methow land. 

Brandel France de Bravo is the author of the forthcoming Locomotive Cathedral (Backwaters Press, University of Nebraska), Provenance, and the chapbook Mother, Loose. Her poems and essays have appeared in 32 Poems, Barrow Street, Conduit, The Georgia Review, Seneca Review and elsewhere. She teaches a meditation program developed at Stanford University called Compassion Cultivation Training.©

Jennifer Martelli is the author of The Queen of Queens, winner of the 2023 Italian American Studies Association Book Award and selected as a “Must Read” by the Massachusetts Center for the Book, and My Tarantella, also selected as a “Must Read” and named as a finalist for the Housatonic Book Award. She is the author of the chapbooks All Things are Born to Change Their Shapes, In the Year of Ferraro, and After Bird. Her work has appeared in The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Poetry, The Tahoma Literary Review, Scoundrel Time, Broadsided Press, Verse Daily, Iron Horse Review, and elsewhere. Jennifer Martelli has twice received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council for her poetry. She is co-poetry editor for MER.

Barbara O’Dair has been writing poetry sporadically since she was seven years old, culminating in an MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College’s low-residency creative writing program. There, she befriended the other three readers here today.

After graduation, Barbara lost touch with her pals and more or less shelved poetry to raise her kids and pursue a journalism career—including three times as a magazine editor-in-chief and four times as an executive editor. During COVID she reached out to her Warren Wilson friends with the suggestion they form a writing workshop, which continues to this day. Nevertheless, she considers herself a newbie again.

Barbara was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2022. She was selected by Thomas Lux to be the winner of Mudfish 9’s annual poetry contest. She has also published in Semiotexte; Wisconsin Review; Alaska Quarterly; Nerve; Feminist Review and Lumina, and in several anthologies, including Shore Stories and All We Know of Pleasure.

She lives with her family in New Jersey.

Registration for this reading is easy and free: bit.ly/WTUIJan2024

We’re closing out 2023 with two incomparable poets!

Adrian Matejka was born in Germany as part of a military family. He grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana and is a graduate of Indiana University Bloomington and the MFA program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

He is the author of The Devil’s Garden (Alice James Books, 2003) which won the New York / New England Award and Mixology (Penguin, 2009), a winner of the 2008 National Poetry Series. His third collection, The Big Smoke (Penguin, 2013), was awarded the 2014 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. The Big Smoke was also a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, the National Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize in poetry. His next collection, Map to the Stars, was published by Penguin in 2017.

His mixed media collaboration with Nicholas Galanin and Kevin Neireiter inspired by Funkadelic, Standing on the Verge & Maggot Brain (Third Man Books), was published in 2021. His most recent collection of poems, Somebody Else Sold the World (Penguin, 2021), was a finalist for the UNT 2022 Rilke Prize and the 2022 Indiana Authors Award. His first graphic novel Last On His Feet:Jack Johnson and the Battle of the Century was published in February 2023 by Liveright.

Among Matejka’s other honors are the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award, the Julia Peterkin Award, and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and a Simon Fellowship from United States Artists. He served as Poet Laureate of the state of Indiana in 2018-19. He currently lives in Chicago and is Editor of Poetry magazine.

Kevin Prufer's newest poetry collection, The Fears, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in 2023. His new novel, Sleepaway, will appear in 2024 from Acre Books. He is also the author of several other books of poetry, including The Art of Fiction (2021), How He Loved Them (2018), Churches (2014), In a Beautiful Country (2011), and National Anthem (2008), all from Four Way Books.

He's edited several volumes of poetry, including New European Poets (Graywolf Press, 2008; w/ Wayne Miller), Literary Publishing in the 21st Century (Milkweed Editions, 2016; w/ Wayne Miller & Travis Kurowski), and Into English: Poems, Translations, Commentaries (Graywolf Press, 2017; w/Martha Collins).

With Wayne Miller and Martin Rock, Prufer directs the Unsung Masters Series, a book series devoted to bringing the work of great but little known authors to new generations of readers through the annual republication of a large body of each author's work, printed alongside essays, photographs, and ephemera.

Prufer is a professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston and the low-residency MFA at Lesley University.

Among Prufer's awards and honors are many Pushcart prizes and Best American Poetry selections, numerous awards from the Poetry Society of America, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Lannan Foundation. His poetry collection How He Loved Them was long-listed for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and received the Julie Suk Award for the best poetry book of 2018 from the American literary press.

Born in 1969 in Cleveland, Ohio, Kevin Prufer studied at Wesleyan University (BA), Hollins College (MA) and Washington University (MFA).

 Registration is easy and quick: bit.ly/WTUIDec2023

We couldn’t be happier to host two brilliant & beloved poets for the November edition of What The Universe Is! Come through for the lush, electric poems and stay for the fierce tenderness & tender fierceness.

Gustavo Hernandez is the author of the poetry collection Flower Grand First (Moon Tide Press 2021) and the chapbooks Form His Arms and Little Fleece (Ghost City Press). His work has been featured in The Los Angeles Times, The Slowdown Podcast, The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series, as well as various literary journals across the country. Hernandez was born in Jalisco, Mexico and was raised in Santa Ana, California, where he still resides.

Diane Seuss is the author of six books of poetry. Her most recent collection is frank: sonnets (Graywolf Press 2021), winner of the PEN/Voelcker Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl (Graywolf Press 2018), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Four-Legged Girl (Graywolf Press 2015) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open (University of Massachusetts Press), received the Juniper Prize. Her sixth collection, Modern Poetry, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2024. Seuss was a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow. She received the John Updike Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2021. Seuss was raised by a single mother in rural Michigan, which she continues to call home.

Registration is quick and easy at bit.ly/WTUINov2023

October is a charmed month, when the veil between our world and the next thins, allowing access to that which lies beyond…

This month’s poets are well-acquainted with the possibilities, spectral and otherwise, of poetry, and they are exceptional practitioners of the art. Come listen; their work will haunt you.

Jessica Cuello’s most recent book is Yours, Creature (JackLeg Press). Her book Liar, selected by Dorianne Laux for The 2020 Barrow Street Book Prize, was honored with The Eugene Nassar Prize, The CNY Book Award, and a finalist nod for The Housatonic Book Award. Cuello is also the author of Hunt (The Word Works, 2017) and Pricking (Tiger Bark Press, 2016). Cuello has been awarded The 2022 Nina Riggs Poetry Prize, two CNY Book Awards, The 2016 Washington Prize, The New Letters Poetry Prize, a Saltonstall Fellowship, and The New Ohio Review Poetry Prize. She is poetry editor at Tahoma Literary Review and teaches French in Central NY.

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, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. He is an assistant professor at Dartmouth College and also teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

Registration is free & easy at bit.ly/WTUIOct2023

September is a month of renewals and returns, but it’s also an opportunity for new beginnings. This month we’re delighted to showcase two exceptional emerging poets. Ide and Eliot both write verse that is distinctly their own, and we can’t wait for you to hear it!

IDE AMARI THOMPSON (he / they) is a Black and Queer Caribbean writer from Nassau, Bahamas. Ide is working on MLS degree from University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne and is a poetry MFA candidate at UMass Amherst, where they received honorable mentions for the Daniel and Merrily Glosband MFA Fellowship in Poetry and the Skofield Goeckel Award in 2021. Their written work has appeared in the PREE online journal, in Onyx magazine, a creative journal for diasporic Black writers based in the UK, and in the NE9 exhibition “The Fruit & The Seed” (2018) and “REFUGE” (2019), both exhibited by the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas, Stellium Literary Magazine, and most recently in Maple Tree Literary Supplement.

ELIOT CARDINAUX was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1984, and spent time growing up in Geneva, Switzerland. In addition to being a poet and translator, he is a pianist and composer working in the field of jazz and improvisation. He studied briefly at Manhattan School of Music, and Conservatorium van Amsterdam, before completing his degree in music at New England Conservatory. He went on to acquire an MFA in poetry from The University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has traveled to Denmark and Germany several times over the last decade to perform and record his poetry and music. At present, he has a trio with Will McEvoy and Max Goldman, a duo with Gary Fieldman, and is a member of the international ensemble Our Hearts as Thieves. His albums include American Thicket, Sweet Beyond Witness, Out of Our Systems, and Pavane. Eliot’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Jacket2, Café Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Caliban Online, Talisman, Bloodroot, and Big Big Wednesday. His translations from the French of René Char have appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, and are forthcoming in Solstice. His debut poetry collection, On the Long Blue Night, was recently published by Dos Madres Press. Eliot is the founder of The Bodily Press, an independent chapbook press and record label. He has taught at UMass Amherst, and worked as a bookseller at Amherst Books.

Be sure to register for this reading at https://bit.ly/WTUISep2023 so you don’t add “Regret” to your list of September emotions.

Late August is a perfect time to sit with the exceptional poems of Natalie Padilla Young and Autumn McClintock and consider the world around us - both built and natural - and the ways it affects us and we affect it.

Natalie Padilla Young co-founded and manages the poetry magazine Sugar House Review. By day, she works as an art director for a Salt Lake City ad agency. Her first book All of This Was Once Under Water is out from Quarter Press (2023). Natalie’s poetry has appeared in Green Mountains Review, Tampa Review, Rattle, South Dakota Review, Los Angeles Times, Tar River Poetry, http://Terrain.org , and elsewhere. She serves on the Utah Arts Advisory and Lightscatter Press boards, and lives in southern Utah with the poet Nano Taggart and two dogs. Find more at http://NatalieYoungArts.com  or follow her on Instagram (@pickledbeatss) for many pup pics.

Autumn McClintock is a freelance writer and editor living in Philadelphia. Her newest chapbook, Dirt Bird, was recently published by Alexandria Quarterly Press, and poems of hers have appeared in The Account, Cimarron Review, Denver Quarterly, and The Georgia Review, among others. She is Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. Find her online at http://autumnmcclintock.com.

It is easy to register here for your free Zoom link: bit.ly/WTUIAug2023

Come celebrate the Summer Solstice with two poets who blaze as brightly as the June sun!

Twice selected for Best New Poets, Jen Jabaily-Blackburn’s most recent work is forthcoming/has appeared in Palette Poetry, Salamander, Fugue, Banshee, On the Seawall, Couplet Poetry, Indiana Review, Radar Poetry, The Common, and Massachusetts Review. Her first book of poems, Girl in a Bear Suit, is the winner of the 2023 Elixir Press Annual Poetry Prize and is forthcoming in 2024. She lives in Western Massachusetts with her family, where she is Program & Outreach coordinator for the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College.

Tobias Wray’s No Doubt I Will Return a Different Man won the CSU Poetry Center’s Lighthouse Poetry Series Competition. His work has found homes in Blackbird, Hunger Mountain, Meridian, Verse Daily, and The Georgia Review, as well as Queer Nature: A Poetry Anthology (Autumn House Press). A 2023 National Endowment of the Arts fellow, he teaches at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond. Reach him at www.tobiaswray.com.

Get yourself registered at bit.ly/WTUIJun2023 or run the risk of a life filled with regret.

You will definitely want to join us for this edition of What The Universe Is as we celebrate two powerful poets and help usher a new book into the world!

Brionne Janae is a poet and teaching artist living in Brooklyn. They are the author of Blessed are the Peacemakers (2021) which won the 2020 Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize, and After Jubilee (2017) published by Boat Press. Brionne is a 2023 NEA Creative Writing Fellow, a Hedgebrook Alum and proud Cave Canem Fellow. Their poetry has been published in Best American Poetry 2022, Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, The Sun Magazine, jubilat, and Waxwing among others. Brionne is the co-host of the podcast: The Slave is Gone alongside poet Jericho Brown and Rogue Scholar Aífe Murray. Off the page they go by Breezy.

Enzo Silon Surin is a Haitian-born, award-winning poet, educator, librettist, publisher and social advocate. He is the author of three previous collections of poetry, including When My Body Was A Clinched Fist (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), winner of the 21st Annual Massachusetts Book Awards for Poetry and the forthcoming collection, American Scapegoat (Black Lawrence Press, May 2023). He is co-editor of Where We Stand: Poems of Black Resilience (Cherry Castle Publishing, 2022), and the recipient of a New England Poetry Club grant, a Brother Thomas Fellowship from the Boston Foundation, a PEN New England Discovery Award and a 2020 Denis Diderot Grant as an Artist-in-Residence at Chateau d’Orquevaux in France .

Surin’s work has been featured in numerous publications including by the Poetry Foundation and in Poem-a-Day by the Academy of American Poets. He teaches creative writing and literature at Bunker Hill Community College and is also Founding Editor and Publisher at Central Square Press and Founder/Executive Director at the Faraday Publishing Company, Inc., a nonprofit literary services and social advocacy organization.

Register to get your Zoom link here: bit.ly/WTUIMay2023

National Poetry Month is here, and I’m utterly delighted to be hosting two poets whose work has influenced and shaped my own understanding of poetry’s possibilities:

Tommy Archuleta’s poems have appeared in the New England Review, Laurel Review, Lily Poetry Review, The Cortland Review, Guesthouse, and the Poem-a-Day series sponsored by the Academy of American Poets. His debut full-length collection entitled, Susto, (Center for Literary Publishing, Colorado State University Press),  and his debut chapbook, Fieldnotes (Lily Poetry Review & Press) have both been released as of this month, so please purchase them, especially because the reading falls on his birthday. He lives and writes on the Cochiti Reservation.

Click here to buy Tommy’s book Susto, or click here to buy Tommy’s chapbook Fieldnotes.

Roy G. Guzmán (they/them) is a Honduran poet and scholar. Their first collection, Catrachos, was published by Graywolf Press in 2020. Catrachos was named a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry.

Raised in Miami, Florida, Roy was named a Debut Poet by Poets & Writers Magazine. The recipient of a 2019 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, in 2017 they were named a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellow.

Roy is also the recipient of a 2017 Minnesota State Arts Board Initiative grant and the 2016 Gesell Award for Excellence in Poetry. Their work has been included in several anthologies.
In 2016, Roy was the recipient of a Scribe for Human Rights Fellowship, focusing on issues affecting migrant farm workers in Minnesota. That same year, they were chosen to participate in the fourth Letras Latinas Writers Initiative gathering, sponsored by Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the University of Notre Dame's Institute for Latino Studies, in partnership with the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing and the MFA Program at Arizona State University. Roy returned to Arizona as a Letras Latinas Scholar in 2018.

Roy participated in the first Poetry Incubator, sponsored by the Poetry Foundation and Crescendo Literary, and was invited to run a workshop during the Incubator's second year. After the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, their poem “Restored Mural for Orlando” was turned into a chapbook with the help of poet and visual artist, D. Allen, to raise funds for the victims. With poet Miguel M. Morales, Roy edited the anthology Pulse/Pulso: In Remembrance of Orlando, published by Damaged Goods Press.
In 2015, they were awarded a GRPP Graduate Research Fellowship to investigate trauma caused by violence in and migration from Honduras. In 2018, Roy was awarded a second GRPP Graduate Research Fellowship to travel to Honduras for research.

Roy’s website is http://www.roygguzman.com/ , and you can click here to buy their book.

Register for this event at bit.ly/WTUIApr2023

Along with unpredictable weather and the slow return of the sun to the Northern Hemisphere, March will bring your humble curator’s birthday — and as a gift to all of you, I’m thrilled to present two terrific poets for this month’s installment of What The Universe Is:

Patrick Donnelly is the author of five books of poetry, most recently WILLOW HAMMER, forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2025. About Donnelly, Gregory Orr wrote “everything he writes is suffused with tenderness and intelligence, lucidity and courage.” Former poet laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts, his poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Slate, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Yale Review, and many other journals. Donnelly is director of the Poetry Seminar at The Frost Place, Robert Frost’s old homestead in Franconia, NH, now a center for poetry and the arts. More at: patrickdonnellypoetry.com

Emma Trelles is the 9th Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara, California (2021-2023) and a Poet Laureate Fellow at the Academy of American Poets. She’s also received writing fellowships and honors from CantoMundo, Letras Latinas, and the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs. The daughter of Cuban immigrants, she is the author of Tropicalia (University of Notre Dame Press), winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, and is completing her second book of poems, Courage + the Clock. Recent work is forthcoming or appears in Anacapa Review; Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Culture; The Cortland Review; the New England Review; and Pedestal Magazine. She curates the Mission Poetry Series and is the series editor of the Alta California Chapbook Prize, open to Latina/o/x/e poets in California and published in bilingual editions in the spring by Gunpowder Press.

Come through to hear them read on March 22 at 7:30pm Eastern. Register at bit.ly/WTUIMar2023 to get your Zoom link!

Brionne Janae is a poet and teaching artist living in Brooklyn. They are the author of Blessed are the Peacemakers (2021) which won the 2020 Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize, and After Jubilee (2017) published by Boat Press. Brionne is a 2023 NEA Creative Writing Fellow, a Hedgebrook Alum and proud Cave Canem Fellow. Their poetry has been published in Best American Poetry 2022, Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, The Sun Magazine, jubilat, and Waxwing among others. Brionne is the co-host of the podcast: The Slave is Gone alongside poet Jericho Brown and Rogue Scholar Aífe Murray. Off the page they go by Breezy.

E. Hughes received their MFA+MA from the Litowitz Creative Writing Program at Northwestern University. Their poems have been published or are forthcoming in Guernica Magazine, Poet Lore, Indiana Review, Gulf Coast Journal, RHINO Poetry, and The Offing—among others. They are a Cave Canem fellow. They have been a finalist for the 2021 Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize, longlisted for the 2021 Granum Fellowship Prize, and a semifinalist of the 2022 92Y Discovery Contest. They were nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Award. Currently, Hughes is a PhD student in Philosophy at Emory University.

Register to get your Zoom link here: bit.ly/WTUIFeb2023

The 2023 season of What The Universe Is: A Reading Series is starting off with three incredible contemporary poets:

Leila Chatti is a Tunisian-American poet and author of Deluge (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), winner of the 2021 Levis Reading Prize, the 2021 Luschei Prize for African Poetry, and longlisted for the 2021 PEN Open Book Award, and four chapbooks. Her honors include an NEA Fellowship and multiple Pushcart Prizes. Her poems appear in The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, The Atlantic, POETRY, and elsewhere. She is currently the Grace Hazard Conkling Writer-in-Residence at Smith College.

Matt Donovan is the author of three collections of poetry—The Dug-Up Gun Museum (BOA 2022), Rapture & the Big Bam (Tupelo Press 2017), and Vellum (Mariner 2007)— as well as the book of lyric essays, A Cloud of Unusual Size and Shape: Meditations on Ruin and Redemption (Trinity University Press 2016). Donovan is the recipient of a Whiting Award, a Rome Prize in Literature, a Pushcart Prize, the Levis Reading Prize, and an NEA Fellowship in Literature. In 2017, he received a Creative Capital Grant for Inheritance, a collaborative multimedia chamber opera based on the life of Sarah Winchester. Donovan serves as Director of The Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College. 

Dana Levin’s fifth book is Now Do You Know Where You Are (Copper Canyon, 2022), a New York Times Notable Book of 2022. She is the author of four other books of poetry, including Banana Palace (Copper Canyon Press, 2016) and Sky Burial (Copper Canyon Press, 2011), which The New Yorker called “utterly her own and utterly riveting.” Her poems and essays have appeared in Best American Poetry, The New York Times, The American Poetry Review, The Nation, Poetry, and The Yale Review, among other publications. She is a grateful recipient of many honors, including those from the National Endowment for the Arts, PEN, and the Library of Congress, as well as from the Rona Jaffe, Whiting, and Guggenheim Foundations. Levin teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and serves as Distinguished Writer in Residence at Maryville University in St. Louis.

Registration is free and easy. Just click this link: bit.ly/WTUIJan2023

Please join us for the final installment of What The Universe Is: A Reading Series for the year 2022. This month we’ll celebrate two poets who will light up the December night like the stars they are!

Laura Minor won the 2020 John Ciardi Poetry Prize. Her critically acclaimed debut book of poems, Flowers As Mind Control, was published by the University of Arkansas Press in 2022. She was also a finalist for the 2019 National Poetry Series and the winner of the 2019 ILA's Rita Dove Poetry Award. She currently teaches poetry at Oklahoma State University. 

Nathan McClain is the author of two collections of poetry — Previously Owned (2022) and Scale (2017) — both from Four Way Books. He is also a recipient of fellowships from The Frost Place, Sewanee Writers Conference, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and a graduate of the M.F.A. Program for Writers at Warren Wilson. A Cave Canem fellow, his poems and prose have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Guesthouse, Poetry Northwest, Plume Anthology of Poetry 10, The Critical Flame, and The Common. He teaches at Hampshire College and serves as poetry editor of the Massachusetts Review.

Register at bit.ly/WTUIDec15 to make sure you don’t miss this reading!

Come celebrate the launch of Hari Alluri's chapbook with a trio of powerful West Coast poets!

Hari Alluri (he/him/siya) is a migrant poet of Filipinx & South Asian descent on unceded Coast Salish territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples and Kwantlen, Katzie, and Kwikwitlem lands of Hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓-speaking peoples. Siya is author of The Flayed City (Kaya Press) and chapbooks The Promise of Rust (Mouthfeel Press) and Our Echo of Sudden Mercy (Next Page Press). A recipient of grants, fellowships, awards, and residencies, his work appears widely in print and online, most recently—via Split This Rock—in Best of the Net 2022 and this winter as part of the Burnaby Art Gallery’s Dream Marrow exhibit.

Karla Cordero is a descendant of the Chichimeca peoples of northern Mexico, a Chicana poet, artivist, educator and author of the poetry collection, How To Pull Apart The Earth (Not A Cult.) a 2019 San Diego Book Award winner and awarding-winning finalist for the International Latino Book Award and the International Book Award. In addition, as a performing artist, Karla is the 2013 Grand Slam Champion, aiding the Elevated San Diego Slam Team to rank 4th in the nation at the National Poetry Slam Competition. She has performed for television networks such as NBC 7 San Diego Art Pulse, TBN Juice Live and the Old Globe Theatre. Her work has appeared in NPR, Academy of American Poets, O-Oprah Magazine, PANK, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4 LatiNext Anthology, among other publications. Karla is a Macondo, VONA, CantoMundo, Pink Door Writing Retreat, Community of Writers Fellow. She is a professor in composition and creative writing at MiraCosta College and San Diego City College. You can follow her work at www.karlacordero.com or IG: @karlaflaka13

Arthur Kayzakian is the winner of the inaugural 2021 Black Lawrence Immigrant Writing Series award for his collection, The Book of Redacted Paintings, which was also selected as a finalist for the 2021 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. He is also the winner of the Finishing Line Press Open Chapbook Competition for his chapbook, My Burning City. He has been a finalist for the Locked Horn Press Chapbook Prize, Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize, the C.D. Wright Prize, the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize, and the Black River Chapbook Competition. He is a contributing editor at Poetry International and a recipient of the Minas Savvas Fellowship. He serves as the Poetry Chair for the International Armenian Literary Alliance (IALA). His work has appeared in or is forthcoming from several publications including Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art, Portland Review, Chicago Review, Nat. Brut, Michigan Quarterly Review, Witness Magazine, and Prairie Schooner.

Register at bit.ly/WTUI1026 so you don't miss Hari, Karla, and Arthur!

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

Please join us for a power-packed reading from two poets hailing from the North Shore of Massachusetts!

Jennifer Martelli (she, her, hers) is the author of My Tarantella (Bordighera Press), awarded an Honorable Mention from the Italian-American Studies Association, selected as a 2019 “Must Read” by the Massachusetts Center for the Book, and named as a finalist for the Housatonic Book Award. She is also the author of the chapbooks In the Year of Ferraro from Nixes Mate Press and After Bird, winner of the Grey Book Press open reading, 2016. Her work has appeared in The Tahoma Literary Review, Thrush, Cream City Review, Verse Daily, Iron Horse Review (winner of the Photo Finish contest), and Poetry. Jennifer Martelli has twice received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council for her poetry. She is co-poetry editor for Mom Egg Review.

January Gill O'Neil is an associate professor at Salem State University, and the author of Rewilding (2018), Misery Islands (2014), and Underlife (2009), all published by CavanKerry Press. From 2012-2018, she served as the executive director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, and currently serves on the boards of AWP, Mass Poetry, and Montserrat College of Art. Her poems and articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day series, American Poetry Review, Green Mountains Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, and WBUR’s Cognoscenti, among others. The recipient of fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Cave Canem, and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, O'Neil was the 2019-2020 John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi, Oxford. She lives with her two kids in Beverly, MA.

Click on this link to register: https://bit.ly/wtui0616

A Cave Canem alum, Tommye Blount is the author of the chapbook What Are We Not For—published by Bull City Press in 2016. His debut full-length collection Fantasia for the Man in Blue, published by Four Way Books in 2020, was finalist for numerous awards, among them: the National Book Award, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, the Lambda Literary Award in Gay Poetry, and others. Born and raised in Detroit, Tommye now lives in the nearby suburb of Novi, Michigan.

Sean Singer is the author of Discography (Yale University Press, 2002), winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, selected by W.S. Merwin, and the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America; Honey & Smoke (Eyewear Publishing, 2015); and Today in the Taxi (Tupelo Press, 2022). He runs a manuscript consultation service at www.seansingerpoetry.com

Register here! https://bit.ly/3wMBEiT