Join Tyler Mills and Jennifer Litt for a poetry reading at The Betsy-South Beach Library. April 10th, starting at 7:30 PM EST.

Tyler Mills (she/her) is the author of City Scattered (Snowbound Chapbook Award, Tupelo Press 2022), Hawk Parable (Akron Poetry Prize, University of Akron Press 2019), Tongue Lyre (Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award, Southern Illinois University Press 2013), and co-author with Kendra DeColo of Low Budget Movie (Diode Editions Chapbook Prize, Diode Editions 2021). Her nonfiction manuscript, The Bomb Cloud, received a Literature Grant from the Café Royal Foundation NYC. A poet and essayist, her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, The New Republic, The Believer, and Poetry, and her essays in AGNI, Brevity, Copper Nickel, River Teeth, and The Rumpus. She teaches for Sarah Lawrence College’s Writing Institute and lives in Brooklyn.

After graduating from the University of Rhode Island with a BA in English, Jennifer Litt moved to London, England, to work as an au pair and to absorb the culture. She earned a Diploma of Chelsea College (MA equivalent) in Modern Social and Cultural Studies and, after returning to the States, she worked as a secondary English teacher and language arts coordinator in Miami and as an adult literacy instructor and an adjunct writing professor in Rochester, New York. Jennifer relocated to Fort Lauderdale in 2018 and works part-time as a freelance editor. She is the author of the chapbook, Maximum Speed Through Zero (Blue Lyra Press, 2016) and the poetry collection, Strictly from Hunger (Accents Publishing, 2022). Jennifer’s work has appeared in several publications, including ellipsis…literature & art, Blue Earth Review, Gulf Stream, Jet Fuel Review, Lumina, Naugatuck River Review, nycBigCityLit, South Florida Poetry Journal, Stone Canoe, SWWIM Every Day, and Witchery.

Meet the artist Tyler Mills at The Betsy-South Beach Library on April 10th starting at 6:00 PM EST.

Tyler Mills (she/her) is the author of City Scattered (Snowbound Chapbook Award, Tupelo Press 2022), Hawk Parable (Akron Poetry Prize, University of Akron Press 2019), Tongue Lyre (Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award, Southern Illinois University Press 2013), and co-author with Kendra DeColo of Low Budget Movie (Diode Editions Chapbook Prize, Diode Editions 2021). Her nonfiction manuscript, The Bomb Cloud, received a Literature Grant from the Café Royal Foundation NYC. A poet and essayist, her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, The New Republic, The Believer, and Poetry, and her essays in AGNI, Brevity, Copper Nickel, River Teeth, and The Rumpus. She teaches for Sarah Lawrence College’s Writing Institute and lives in Brooklyn.

Join Keetje Kuipers and Julie Marie Wade for a poetry reading at The Betsy-South Beach Library. March 6th, starting at 7:30 PM EST.

Keetje Kuipers is the author of three books of poems, all from BOA Editions: Beautiful in the Mouth (2010), which was chosen by Thomas Lux as the winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, The Keys to the Jail (2014), and All Its Charms (2019), which includes poems honored by publication in both The Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies. Keetje’s poetry and prose have appeared in Narrative, Virginia Quarterly Review, The New York Times Magazine, American Poetry Review, Orion, The Believer, and over a hundred other magazines. Keetje has been a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, the Katharine Bakeless Nason Fellow in Poetry at Bread Loaf, the Emerging Writer Lecturer at Gettysburg College, and the recipient of multiple residency fellowships, including PEN Northwest’s Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency. Keetje is Editor of Poetry Northwest and a board member at the National Book Critics Circle. She lives in Missoula, Montana, with her wife, their two children, and a backyard full of bears.

Julie Marie Wade is a member of the creative writing faculty at Florida International University in Miami. A winner of the Marie Alexander Poetry Series and the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir, her collections of poetry and prose include Wishbone: A Memoir in Fractures, Small Fires: Essays, Postage Due: Poems & Prose Poems, When I Was Straight, Same-Sexy Marriage: A Novella in Poems, Just an Ordinary Woman Breathing, and Skirted. Her collaborative titles include The Unrhymables: Collaborations in Prose, written with Denise Duhamel, and Telephone: Essays in Two Voices, written with Brenda Miller. Wade makes her home in Dania Beach with her spouse Angie Griffin and their two cats. Her newest projects are Fugue: An Aural History (New Michigan Press, 2023), and Otherwise: Essays (Autumn House, 2023), selected by Lia Purpura for the 2022 Autumn House Press Nonfiction Book Prize. Forthcoming in 2024 is The Mary Years: A Memoir, selected by Michael Martone as the winner of the 2023 Clay Renolds Novella Prize.

Meet the artist Keetje Kuipers at The Betsy-South Beach Library on March 6th starting at 6:00 PM EST.

Keetje Kuipers is the author of three books of poems, all from BOA Editions: Beautiful in the Mouth (2010), which was chosen by Thomas Lux as the winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, The Keys to the Jail (2014), and All Its Charms (2019), which includes poems honored by publication in both The Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies. Keetje’s poetry and prose have appeared in Narrative, Virginia Quarterly Review, The New York Times Magazine, American Poetry Review, Orion, The Believer, and over a hundred other magazines. Keetje has been a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, the Katharine Bakeless Nason Fellow in Poetry at Bread Loaf, the Emerging Writer Lecturer at Gettysburg College, and the recipient of multiple residency fellowships, including PEN Northwest’s Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency. Keetje is Editor of Poetry Northwest and a board member at the National Book Critics Circle. She lives in Missoula, Montana, with her wife, their two children, and a backyard full of bears.

Join Farnaz Fatemi and Fabienne Josaphat for a poetry reading at The Betsy-South Beach Library. February 7th, starting at 7:30 PM EST.

Farnaz Fatemi, an Iranian American poet and writer, is a founding member of The Hive Poetry Collective and was formerly a writing instructor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her book, Sister Tongue زبان خواهر, was published in September 2022. It won the 2021 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, selected by Tracy K. Smith, and received a Starred Review from Publisher’s Weekly.  Some of her poems and lyric essays appear in Poem-a-Day (Poets.org), Tab Journal, Pedestal Review, Nowruz Journal, Grist Journal and Tupelo Quarterly and the anthologies Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and its Diaspora and Halal If You Hear Me.  More at farnazfatemi.com

Fabienne Josaphat is the 2023 PEN Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, and the author of the forthcoming novel Kingdom of No Tomorrow (Algonquin). Her first novel, Dancing in the Baron’s Shadow, was published by Unnamed Press. Her publications include poems in Kitchen Table Quarterly, Grist Journal, Hinchas de Poesia, and Eight Miami Poets, essays in The Washington Post and Teen Vogue. She is currently at work on a third novel.

Meet the artist Farnaz Fatemi at The Betsy-South Beach Library on February 7th starting at 6:00 PM EST.

Farnaz Fatemi, an Iranian American poet and writer, is a founding member of The Hive Poetry Collective and was formerly a writing instructor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her book, Sister Tongue زبان خواهر, was published in September 2022. It won the 2021 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, selected by Tracy K. Smith, and received a Starred Review from Publisher’s Weekly.  Some of her poems and lyric essays appear in Poem-a-Day (Poets.org), Tab Journal, Pedestal Review, Nowruz Journal, Grist Journal and Tupelo Quarterly and the anthologies Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and its Diaspora and Halal If You Hear Me.  More at farnazfatemi.com

Join Kristen Renee Miller and Arsimmer McCoy for a poetry reading at The Betsy-South Beach Library. December 19th, starting at 7:30 PM EST.

Kristen Renee Miller is the incoming director and editor-in-chief for Sarabande Books. A poet and translator, she is the 2020 winner of the Gulf Coast Prize in Translation and the translator of two books of poetry from the French by Ilnu Nation poet Marie-Andrée Gill. Her work can be found widely, including in POETRY, The Kenyon Review, DIAGRAM, jubilat, and Best New Poets. She is the recipient of fellowships and awards from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, AIGA, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the American Literary Translators Association. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky.

Arsimmer McCoy is an interdisciplinary artist who merges poetry, archive, performance, and audio/visual sculpture, into a conduit for advocacy. She’s been published in Venice Magazine, RootWork journal, and books 2 and 3 of The Miami Trilogy published by O,Miami. Film writing credits include the art films “HOW TO: Oh, Look at me”, dir by visual artist and sculptor GeoVanna Gonzalez & “You Can Always Come Home”, dir by Emmy award-winner  Juancy Matos. In May, Arsimmer completed and debuted her poetry-driven stage play “I’m so Depressed” for Miami light projects Here and Now artists group show. McCoy is entering her 6th year as a teaching artist with the O, Miami Sunroom program. She resides in Carol City, with her daughter, by way of Richmond Heights, FL. 

Meet the artist Kristen Renee Miller at The Betsy-South Beach Library on December 19th starting at 6:00 PM EST.

Kristen Renee Miller is the incoming director and editor-in-chief for Sarabande Books. A poet and translator, she is the 2020 winner of the Gulf Coast Prize in Translation and the translator of two books of poetry from the French by Ilnu Nation poet Marie-Andrée Gill. Her work can be found widely, including in POETRY, The Kenyon Review, DIAGRAM, jubilat, and Best New Poets. She is the recipient of fellowships and awards from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, AIGA, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the American Literary Translators Association. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky.

Join Ruby Hansen Murray and Judy Ireland for a poetry reading at The Betsy-South Beach Library. November 8th, starting at 7:30 PM EST.

Ruby Hansen Murray is a columnist for the Osage News. A MacDowell fellow, she is winner of the Iowa Review and Montana Prizes, whose work has been nominated for Pushcart prizes and Best of the Net. Her work is forthcoming in Cascadia: A Field Guide (Tupelo Press). Find her in Ecotone, South Florida Poetry Review, River Mouth Review, Under the Sun, the Massachusetts Review, Pleiades, Moss, The Rumpus, and Shapes of Native Nonfiction. She’s a citizen of the Osage Nation with West Indian roots living in the lower Columbia River estuary. www.rubyhansenmurray.com

Judy Ireland is the author of a poetry collection, Cement Shoes, which won the Sinclair Poetry Prize.  Her poems have appeared in Hotel Amerika, Calyx, Saranac Review, Eclipse, Cold Mountain, Coe Review, and other journals, as well as in two anthologies, the Best Indie Lit New England anthology and Voices from the Fierce Intangible World.  She is Senior Poetry Editor & Reading Series Producer for the South Florida Poetry Journal and Co-Director of  Performance Poets of the Palm Beaches. She teaches at Palm Beach State College.

Meet the artist Ruby Hansen Murray at The Betsy-South Beach Library on November 8th starting at 6:00 PM EST.

Ruby Hansen Murray is a columnist for the Osage News. A MacDowell fellow, she is winner of the Iowa Review and Montana Prizes, whose work has been nominated for Pushcart prizes and Best of the Net. Her work is forthcoming in Cascadia: A Field Guide (Tupelo Press). Find her in Ecotone, South Florida Poetry Review, River Mouth Review, Under the Sun, the Massachusetts Review, Pleiades, Moss, The Rumpus, and Shapes of Native Nonfiction. She’s a citizen of the Osage Nation with West Indian roots living in the lower Columbia River estuary. www.rubyhansenmurray.com

Join Raina J. León and Susannah Winters Simpton for a poetry reading at The Betsy-South Beach Library. October 4th, starting at 7:30 PM EST.

Raina J. León, PhD is Black, Afro-Boricua, and from Philadelphia (Lenni Lenape ancestral lands). She is a mother, daughter, sister, madrina, comadre, partner, poet, writer, and teacher/educator. She believes in collective action and community work, the profound power of holding space for the telling of our stories, and the liberatory practice of humanizing education. She seeks out communities of care and craft and is a member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, Cave Canem, CantoMundo, and Macondo, among other creative communities. She is the author of black god mother this body, Canticle of Idols, Boogeyman Dawn, sombra : (dis)locate, and the chapbooks, profeta without refuge and Areyto to Atabey: Essays on the Mother(ing) Self. She publishes across forms in visual art, poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and scholarly work. She has received fellowships and residencies with the Obsidian Foundation, Community of Writers, Montana Artists Refuge, Macdowell, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Annamaghkerrig, Ireland and Ragdale, among others. She is a founding editor of The Acentos Review, an online quarterly, international journal devoted to the promotion and publication of Latinx arts. She recently retired early as a full professor of education at Saint Mary’s College of California, only the third Black person (all Black women) and the first Afro-Latina to achieve that rank there; she now holds professor emerita status, the first Black person to achieve the rank and third Latinx person. She currently supports poets and writers at the Stonecoast MFA at the University of Southern Maine. She is additionally a digital archivist, emerging visual artist, writing coach, and curriculum developer.

Susannah Winters Simpson is a hospice nurse, ESL tutor, and she facilitates her proprietary WriteRECOVERY curriculum in alcohol and drug treatment centers. Her work has been published in North American Review, Potomac, Wisconsin Review, South Carolina Review, POET, Nimrod International, Poet Lore, Salamander, Sequestrum, South Florida Poetry Journal, SWWIM Every Day, and Xavier Review among others. Her poems have been anthologized in Full Moon and Foxglove, Fierce Voices from the Intangible World  and Beyond Words: Women. Life. Her book, Geography of Love & Exile, was published by Cervena Barva Press. Susannah has been a founding member of both the New Mexico Poetry Alliance and Poets for Peace, Long Island Chapter. She currently serves as the founder and co-director of Performance Poets of the Palm Beaches. Susannah holds an MFA from Bennington, a Ph.D. from SUNY/Binghamton, and a postgraduate certificate from the Center for Journal Therapy.

Meet the artist Raina J. León at The Betsy-South Beach Library on October 4th starting at 6:00 PM EST.

Raina J. León, PhD is Black, Afro-Boricua, and from Philadelphia (Lenni Lenape ancestral lands). She is a mother, daughter, sister, madrina, comadre, partner, poet, writer, and teacher/educator. She believes in collective action and community work, the profound power of holding space for the telling of our stories, and the liberatory practice of humanizing education. She seeks out communities of care and craft and is a member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, Cave Canem, CantoMundo, and Macondo, among other creative communities. She is the author of black god mother this body, Canticle of Idols, Boogeyman Dawn, sombra : (dis)locate, and the chapbooks, profeta without refuge and Areyto to Atabey: Essays on the Mother(ing) Self. She publishes across forms in visual art, poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and scholarly work. She has received fellowships and residencies with the Obsidian Foundation, Community of Writers, Montana Artists Refuge, Macdowell, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Annamaghkerrig, Ireland and Ragdale, among others. She is a founding editor of The Acentos Review, an online quarterly, international journal devoted to the promotion and publication of Latinx arts. She recently retired early as a full professor of education at Saint Mary’s College of California, only the third Black person (all Black women) and the first Afro-Latina to achieve that rank there; she now holds professor emerita status, the first Black person to achieve the rank and third Latinx person. She currently supports poets and writers at the Stonecoast MFA at the University of Southern Maine. She is additionally a digital archivist, emerging visual artist, writing coach, and curriculum developer.

Join Felicia Zamora and Lolita Stewart-White for a poetry reading at The Betsy-South Beach Library. September 6th, starting at 7:30 PM EST.

Felicia Zamora is the author of six books of poetry including, I Always Carry My Bones, winner of the 2020 Iowa Poetry Prize (University of Iowa Press, 2021) and the 2022 Ohioana Book Award in Poetry, Body of Render, Benjamin Saltman Award winner (Red Hen Press, 2020), and Of Form & Gather, Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize winner (University of Notre Dame Press). She won the 2022 Loraine Williams Poetry Prize from The Georgia Review, a 2022 Tin House Next Book Residency, and a 2022 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, AGNI, Alaska Quarterly Review, The American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry 2022, Boston Review, Ecotone, The Georgia Review, Guernica,Gulf Coast, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review, Orion, Poetry Magazine, The Nation, West Branch, and others. She is an assistant professor of poetry at the University of Cincinnati and associate poetry editor for the Colorado Review.

Lolita Stewart-White is a poet, playwright and filmmaker who lives and works in Miami. She is a Pushcart nominee and the winner of the Paris American Readers Series. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Green Mountains Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, African American Review, Iowa Review, and Boston Review. She has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Palm Beach Poetry Festival and the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. Stewart-White is a part of City Theatre's BIPOC playwrighting development program. Her plays have been performed at the Adrienne Arsht Center and Mainstreet Players. Stewart-White's films have been exhibited at the Los Angeles Pan African Film and Arts Festival, Seattle Langston Hughes's Film Festival and Miami's Museum of Contemporary Art (Moca).

Meet the artist Felicia Zamora at The Betsy-South Beach Library on September 6th starting at 6:00 PM EST.

Felicia Zamora is the author of six books of poetry including, I Always Carry My Bones, winner of the 2020 Iowa Poetry Prize (University of Iowa Press, 2021) and the 2022 Ohioana Book Award in Poetry, Body of Render, Benjamin Saltman Award winner (Red Hen Press, 2020), and Of Form & Gather, Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize winner (University of Notre Dame Press). She won the 2022 Loraine Williams Poetry Prize from The Georgia Review, a 2022 Tin House Next Book Residency, and a 2022 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, AGNI, Alaska Quarterly Review, The American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry 2022, Boston Review, Ecotone, The Georgia Review, Guernica,Gulf Coast, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review, Orion, Poetry Magazine, The Nation, West Branch, and others. She is an assistant professor of poetry at the University of Cincinnati and associate poetry editor for the Colorado Review.

Join Didi Jackson and Judy Ireland for a poetry reading at The Betsy-South Beach Library. April 12th, starting at 7:30 PM EST.

Didi Jackson is the author of Moon Jar (Red Hen Press, 2020) and the forthcoming collection My Infinity. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Alaska Quarterly, Kenyon Review, The New Yorker, Oxford American, Ploughshares, and Virginia Quarterly Review among other journals and magazines. Her chapbook, Slag and Fortune was published by Floating Wolf Quarterly (2013). She has had poems selected for Best American Poetry, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-day, The Slow Down with Tracy K. Smith, and Together in Sudden Strangeness: America’s Poets Respond to the Pandemic. She is the recipient of the Robert H. Winner Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America and was a finalist for the Meringoff Prize in Poetry. 

Judy Ireland is the author of a poetry collection, Cement Shoes, which won the Sinclair Poetry Prize.  Her poems have appeared in Hotel Amerika, Calyx, Saranac Review, Eclipse, Cold Mountain, Coe Review, and other journals, as well as in two anthologies, the Best Indie Lit New England anthology and Voices from the Fierce Intangible World.  She is Senior Poetry Editor & Reading Series Producer for the South Florida Poetry Journal, Co-Director of  Performance Poets of the Palm Beaches, and teaches at Palm Beach State College.

Meet the artist Didi Jackson at The Betsy-South Beach Library on April 12th starting at 5:30 PM EST.

Didi Jackson is the author of Moon Jar (Red Hen Press, 2020) and the forthcoming collection My Infinity. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Alaska Quarterly, Kenyon Review, The New Yorker, Oxford American, Ploughshares, and Virginia Quarterly Review among other journals and magazines. Her chapbook, Slag and Fortune was published by Floating Wolf Quarterly (2013). She has had poems selected for Best American Poetry, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-day, The Slow Down with Tracy K. Smith, and Together in Sudden Strangeness: America’s Poets Respond to the Pandemic. She is the recipient of the Robert H. Winner Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America and was a finalist for the Meringoff Prize in Poetry. 

Meet the artist Suzanne Frischkorn at The Betsy-South Beach Library on March 16th starting at 5:30 PM EST.

Suzanne Frischkorn is the author of Fixed Star (JackLeg Press 2022), Girl on a Bridge, Lit Windowpane, and five chapbooks. Her honors include the Aldrich Poetry Award for her chapbook Spring Tide, selected by Mary Oliver, an Emerging Writers Fellowship from the Writer’s Center for her book Lit Windowpane, and an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism. Her poems have appeared in Copper Nickel, Ecotone, Indiana Review, The Los Angeles Review, North American Review, Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere. She is an editor for $ - Poetry is Currency and serves on the Terrain.org editorial board.

Join Suzanne Frischkorn and Susannah Simpson for a poetry reading at The Betsy-South Beach Library. March 15th, starting at 7:30 PM EST.

Suzanne Frischkorn is the author of Fixed Star (JackLeg Press 2022), Girl on a Bridge, Lit Windowpane, and five chapbooks. Her honors include the Aldrich Poetry Award for her chapbook Spring Tide, selected by Mary Oliver, an Emerging Writers Fellowship from the Writer’s Center for her book Lit Windowpane, and an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism. Her poems have appeared in Copper Nickel, Ecotone, Indiana Review, The Los Angeles Review, North American Review, Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere. She is an editor for $ - Poetry is Currency and serves on the Terrain.org editorial board.

Susannah Winters Simpson is a hospice nurse, ESL tutor, and she facilitates her proprietary WriteRECOVERY curriculum in alcohol and drug treatment centers. Her work has been published in North American Review, Potomac, Wisconsin Review, South Carolina Review, POET, Nimrod International, Poet Lore, Salamander, Sequestrum, South Florida Poetry Journal, SWWIM, and Xavier Review among others. Her poems have been anthologized in Full Moon and Foxglove, Fierce Voices from the Intangible World  and Beyond Words: Women. Life. Her book Geography of Love & Exile was published by Cervena Barva Press. Susannah has been a founding member of both the New Mexico Poetry Alliance and Poets for Peace, Long Island Chapter. She currently serves as the founder and co-director of Performance Poets of the Palm Beaches. Susannah holds an MFA from Bennington, a Ph.D. from SUNY/Binghamton, and a postgraduate certificate from the Center for Journal Therapy.

Meet the artist Jenny Qi at The Betsy-South Beach Library on February 9th starting at 5:30 PM EST.

Jenny Qi is the author of Focal Point, winner of the 2020 Steel Toe Books Poetry Award. Her essays and poems have been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships and support from Tin House, Omnidawn, Kearny Street Workshop, the San Francisco Writers Grotto, the Brown Handler Residency, and the San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press. Born in Pennsylvania to Chinese immigrants, she grew up mostly in Las Vegas and Nashville and now lives in San Francisco, where she completed her Ph.D. in Cancer Biology. She is working on more essays and poems and translating her late mother’s memoirs of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and immigration to the U.S. When she needs a break from these projects, she works on fiction.

Join Jenny Qi and Susan L. Leary for a poetry reading at The Betsy-South Beach Library. February 8th, starting at 7:30 PM EST.

Jenny Qi is the author of Focal Point, winner of the 2020 Steel Toe Books Poetry Award. Her essays and poems have been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships and support from Tin House, Omnidawn, Kearny Street Workshop, the San Francisco Writers Grotto, the Brown Handler Residency, and the San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press. Born in Pennsylvania to Chinese immigrants, she grew up mostly in Las Vegas and Nashville and now lives in San Francisco, where she completed her Ph.D. in Cancer Biology. She is working on more essays and poems and translating her late mother’s memoirs of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and immigration to the U.S. When she needs a break from these projects, she works on fiction.

Susan L. Leary is the author of two poetry collections: Contraband Paradise (Main Street Rag, 2021) and the chapbook, This Girl, Your Disciple (Finishing Line Press, 2019), which was a finalist for The Heartland Review Press Chapbook Prize and a semi-finalist for the Elyse Wolf Prize with Slate Roof Press. Her poetry and nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in such places as Tar River Poetry, Tahoma Literary Review, Cherry Tree, Jet Fuel Review, The MacGuffin, Rust + Moth, and Pithead Chapel. She has been nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Anthology, and recently she was a finalist for the 16th Mudfish Poetry Prize, judged by Marie Howe. She holds an MFA from the University of Miami, where she also teaches Writing Studies. 

Meet the artist Traci Brimhall at The Betsy-South Beach Library on December 15th starting at 5:30 PM EST.

Traci Brimhall is the author of four collections of poetry: Come the Slumberless from the Land of Nod (Copper Canyon Press), Saudade(Copper Canyon Press), Our Lady of the Ruins (W.W. Norton), and Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Slate, The Believer, The New Republic, Orion, New York Times Magazine, and Best American Poetry. She’s received a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship and is currently Director of Creative Writing at Kansas State University.

Join Traci Brimhall and Silvia Curbelo for a poetry reading at The Betsy-South Beach Library. December 14th, starting at 7:30 PM EST.

Traci Brimhall is the author of four collections of poetry: Come the Slumberless from the Land of Nod (Copper Canyon Press), Saudade(Copper Canyon Press), Our Lady of the Ruins (W.W. Norton), and Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Slate, The Believer, The New Republic, Orion, New York Times Magazine, and Best American Poetry. She’s received a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship and is currently Director of Creative Writing at Kansas State University.

Silvia Curbelo was born in Matanzas, Cuba, and emigrated to the U.S. with her family as a child. Her poetry collections include, Falling Landscape and The Secret History of Water, both from Anhinga Press, and Ambush, winner of the Main Street Rag Chapbook Contest. She has received poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, the Cintas Foundation and the Writer’s Voice, as well as the Jessica Noble Maxwell Memorial Poetry Prize from American Poetry Review. Her poems have been published widely in literary journals and more than three-dozen anthologies and textbooks, including Poems, Poets, Poetry (Bedford/St. Martin) and The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature (W.W. Norton). Silvia has lived in Tampa, Florida, all her adult life.

Meet the artist Jessica Cuello at The Betsy-South Beach Library on November 17th starting at 5:30 PM EST.

Jessica Cuello’s Liar was selected by Dorianne Laux for the 2020 Barrow Street Book Prize and her manuscript Yours, Creature is forthcoming from JackLeg Press in spring of 2023. Cuello is also the author of Hunt (The Word Works, 2017) and Pricking (Tiger Bark Press, 2016). Cuello has been awarded The 2017 CNY Book Award, The 2016 Washington Prize, The New Letters Poetry Prize, a Saltonstall Fellowship, and The New Ohio Review Poetry Prize. She is a poetry editor at Tahoma Literary Review and teaches French in CNY.

Join Jessica Cuello and Rita Maria Martinez for a poetry reading at The Betsy-South Beach Library. November 16th, starting at 7:30 PM EST.

Jessica Cuello’s Liar was selected by Dorianne Laux for the 2020 Barrow Street Book Prize and her manuscript Yours, Creature is forthcoming from JackLeg Press in spring of 2023. Cuello is also the author of Hunt (The Word Works, 2017) and Pricking (Tiger Bark Press, 2016). Cuello has been awarded The 2017 CNY Book Award, The 2016 Washington Prize, The New Letters Poetry Prize, a Saltonstall Fellowship, and The New Ohio Review Poetry Prize. She is a poetry editor at Tahoma Literary Review and teaches French in CNY.

Rita Maria Martinez’s poetry explores resiliency amidst chronic daily headache (CDH) and migraine. Her poetry collection—The Jane and Bertha in Me (published by Kelsay Books)—celebrates Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and was a finalist for the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. Martinez’s work appears in the textbook Three Genres: The Writing of Fiction/Literary Nonfiction, Poetry and Drama, and in the Notre Dame Review, the Best American Poetry Blog, Ploughshares, Tupelo Quarterly, and SWIMM Every Day. Visit her site at comeonhome.org/ritamartinez/