In honor of National Poetry Month, join us for a reading and Q & A with Gazan Poet Yahya Ashour.

Yahya Ashour was born in Gaza City, on April 22, 1998. He's a touring poet and an award-winning author. He's a 2022 fellow in writing at the University of Iowa. He has one poetry collection and one children's book published in Arabic and has contributed to several printed anthologies and online journals worldwide. His writings were translated into English, French, Spanish, Italian, and Finnish. He has delivered several creative writing workshops for children and youth in Gaza.

Moderated by Sarah Gambito | Co-Sponsored by Mizna and Columbia University School of the Arts

Fordham University, Lincoln Center Campus
113 West 60th St., Twelfth floor Lounge

Admission Free.
Donations Welcome.

New settings of poetry by Fordham University Press poets Alison Powell and Jennifer Atkinson By composers Laura Jobin-Acosta and David Wolfson

Join JoAnne McFarland for a reading and Q&A. McFarland’s recent book Pullman examines themes of labor and love, using as its backdrop the history of the treatment of the Pullman car porters of the late 19th century. The poems and art pieces draw on historical sources, from the slave narratives of Harriet Jacobs to the creative output of the poet and artist’s late father, a musician and songwriter for Aretha Franklin.

ASL interpretation and Zoom captioning will be provided. For other access queries, please contact efrost@fordham.edu.

Photo credit: Rachel Eliza Griffiths. Photo description: Wearing a white shirt and pants, JoAnne McFarland is seated on a wooden stool in front of one of her paintings, a large portrait of a black doll in an antique white dress.

In honor of National Poetry Month, join us as we celebrate communal reading as power and vital connection. Inspired by the NYTimes article, "It's My Party and I'll Read if I Want To," we'll read together and talk together. Bring the book you are reading and join us!

Brunch will be served | Limited Space, RSVP by March 20th

Join Tina Chang for a reading and Q&A. In her most recent book, Hybrida, Chang confronts the complexities of raising a mixed-race child during an era of political upheaval in the United States, ruminating on the relationship between her son’s blackness and his safety.

ASL interpretation and Zoom captioning will be provided. For other access queries, please contact efrost@fordham.edu.

Photo description: Tina Chang smiles toward the camera. She is seated on a sofa, with books shown behind her.

Join Naomi Ortiz for a reading and Q&A. Ortiz's poetry/essay collection Rituals for Climate Change: A Crip Struggle for Ecojustice explores the ways body, mind, and cultures both clash with and long for ecojustice, connecting disability justice to a new understanding of life on the borderlands.

ASL interpretation and Zoom captioning will be provided. For other access queries, please contact efrost@fordham.edu.

Photo description: Naomi Ortiz holds up a copy of their book Sustaining Spirit. They are seated in a power chair in a desert landscape.

Join us for a virtual poetry reading, Q&A, and writing prompt with poet and activist Katy Lederer!

Katy Lederer is the author of the recent poetry collection The Engineers (Saturnalia Books). She is also the author of three previous books of poetry and a memoir. Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in the American Poetry Review, the Boston Review, and the Paris Review, among many other publications. She has reported on energy and climate change for n+1, the New York Times, and the New Yorker online. A recipient of fellowships from Yaddo and MacDowell, she has taught poetry workshops and climate change writing at Columbia University, Fordham University, Barnard College, and the New School. She lives in Manhattan with her partner and two children.

You can just be. You don't have to try so hard. Just rest.
Be. Let us rest and resist together. ~ Tricia Hersey

Inspired by Hersey's The Nap Ministry, we'll embrace rest as resistance against burnout, systemic oppression, and the grind of modern society. Let's center day-dreaming and self-care this school year. Give yourself the gift of an invocation to rest, yoga nidra (dream yoga), contemplative journaling and a restorative tea reception. 

• Tickets are Limited.

• Feel free to bring a yoga mat or towel to lie down on. (We also have a limited number of yoga mats we can loan out.)

• Wear clothing that you can rest in.

Co-sponsored by: Campus Ministry, The Creative Writing Program, GSS & The Poetic Justice Institute

Join poet and scholar Sally Mao as she shares advice on applying to graduate MFA creative writing programs and MFA student life. Q & A to follow.

Sally Wen Mao is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection The Kingdom of Surfaces (Graywolf Press, 2023), and the debut fiction collection Ninetails (Penguin Books). She is also the author of two previous poetry collections, Oculus (Graywolf Press, 2019), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Mad Honey Symposium (Alice James Books, 2014). The recipient of two Pushcart Prizes and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, she was recently a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library and a Shearing Fellow at the Black Mountain Institute.

Sponsored by Poetic Justice Institute & The Creative Writing Program

Join us for a virtual poetry reading, Q&A, and writing prompt with poet and activist Saleem Hue Penny!

Saleem Hue Penny (him/friend) is a Black poet expanding the pastoral tradition of the Southern Black Belt using a "rural hip-hop blues" aesthetic. Drum loops, field sounds, gouache, and birch bark commonly punctuate his poetry; these hybrid audio/mixed media pieces are released under the moniker h.u.e (hope - uplifts - everything).

The 2021 Poetry Coalition Fellow at Zoeglossia, an Assistant Poetry Editor at Bellevue Literary Review, and a proud Cave Canem Fellow, his writing and hybrid art pieces explore how young people of color traverse wild spaces and define freedom on their own terms.

Saleem is committed to disability justice, not only as a macro social worker, mutual aid advocate, and volunteer Hospital Magician, but as a person with less-visible disabilities and health conditions such as Ramsay Hunt Syndrome, single-sided deafness, and Bipolar II. Care Work comes in many forms and is essential to our collective liberation.

He is compiling his first full-length poetry collection, battling against bull thistle in the community garden, and pursuing archival research for a long-form lyric essay set in Reconstruction-era “Affrilachia”.

Join us for a virtual poetry reading, Q&A, and writing prompt with poet and activist Xoài Phạm!

Xoài Phạm (she/her) is a Vietnamese trans woman descended from a lineage of warriors, healers, and shamans. Her life’s work is in shaping a future where we are all limitless. She serves as the deputy director of communications at Transgender Law Center, the communications director at the Southeast Asian Freedom Network, and writes for publications like Elle, Esquire, and Teen Vogue.

Join us for a virtual poetry reading, Q&A, and writing prompt with poet and organizer Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo!

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and the author of Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge (Sundress Publications 2016). A former Steinbeck Fellow and Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange winner, she’s received residencies from Hedgebrook, Ragdale, National Parks Arts Foundation, and Poetry Foundation. She has poetry published in Acentos Review, CALYX, crazyhorse, and most recently, her poem, “Battlegrounds” was featured at Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day and On Being’s Poetry Unbound. Her poetry and organizing are inspired by her Chicana experience and a drive to cultivate comfort in chaotic times. She is director of Women Who Submit, a literary organization fighting for gender parity in publishing.

Join us for a virtual poetry reading and Q&A with poet Jennifer Atkinson

Jennifer Atkinson is the author of six poetry collections, including, most recently, A Gray Realm the Ocean from Fordham UP. Until retiring in June 2021, she taught in George Mason University's MFA and BFA programs.

Join us for a short virtual poetry reading and Q & A with poet and teacher Monica Sok!

Monica Sok is the author of A Nail the Evening Hangs On (Copper Canyon Press, 2020). She has received fellowships from Hedgebrook, Kundiman, MacDowell, National Endowment for the Arts, Poetry Society of America, the Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, and others. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Paris Review, POETRY, Kenyon Review, and New Republic, among others.

Join us for an afternoon of creativity in the New York Botanical Garden. You'll be guided through a mindful wandering of this landmark space by a series of poetic prompts designed to get you writing and centered. Bring your smart device to access our event QR code and your fave notebook and pen!

Established in 1891, The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) is distinguished by the beauty of its landscape, collections, and gardens, and the scope and excellence of its programs in horticulture, education, and science. Today, the 250-acre Garden—the largest in any city in the United States—is a National Historic Landmark. Highlights include the award-winning Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden, considered among the world’s most sustainable rose gardens; the Native Plant Garden, celebrating the diversity of northeastern North American plants; and 30,000 distinguished trees, many more than 200 years old. More than one million visitors annually enjoy the grounds, view innovative exhibitions, and participate in educational programs that are larger and more diverse than those of any other garden in the world.

Meet at the Southern Boulevard Entrance
Students receive free access to the Garden with your Fordham ID

Join us for a virtual poetry reading, Q&A, and writing prompt with poet and activist Monica Prince!

Monica Prince (she/her) teaches activist and performance writing at Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania. She is the author of How to Exterminate the Black Woman: A Choreopoem (2020), Instructions for Temporary Survival (2019), and Letters from the Other Woman (2018). She is the managing editor of the SFWP Quarterly, and the co-author of the suffrage play, Pageant of Agitating Women, with Anna Andes. Her next choreopoem, Roadmap, will be published by SFWP in 2023.

Join us for a virtual poetry reading and Q&A with poet and performer Wo Chan!

Wo Chan is a poet and drag performer. They are the author of Togetherness (Nightboat 2022) and are a recipient of fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, MacDowell, Kundiman, The Asian American Writers Workshop, and elsewhere.

Join us for a virtual poetry reading, Q&A, and writing prompt with poet and writer Rana Tahir. The event will conclude with a choose-your-own adventure poetry writing prompt for attendees.

Rana Tahir (she/her) is a poet and educator living in Portland. She is of Pakistani origin and grew up in Kuwait. Having earned her MFA from Pacific University, she is now a Kundiman Fellow and member of RAWI. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming from Print Oriented Bastards, Bahr Magazine, Poetry Online, and Palette Poetry among others. She is the author of two books, a textbook on the life and work of Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen and a Choose Your Own Adventure Novel based on the life of World War II Heroine Noor Inayat Khan. Currently, she is working on her next book of fiction which will be forthcoming next year as well as a poetry manuscript.

Join us for a virtual poetry reading and Q&A with poet and social justice communications writer and strategist Tamiko Beyer. The event will conclude with a writing prompt for attendees.

Tamiko Beyer (she/her) is the author the poetry collections Last Days (Alice James Books) and We Come Elemental (Alice James Books), winner of the Kinereth Gensler Award, and chapbooks Dovetail (co-authored with Kimiko Hahn, Slapering Hol Press) and bough breaks (Meritage Press). Her poetry and articles have been published widely, including by Denver Quarterly, Idaho Review, Dusie, Black Warrior Review, Georgia Review, Lit Hub, and the Rumpus. She has received awards from PEN America and the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund, and fellowships and residencies from Kundiman, Hedgebrook, and VONA, among others. She publishes Starlight and Strategy, a monthly newsletter for living life wide awake and shaping change. She is a queer, multiracial (Japanese and white), cisgender woman and femme, living and writing in on Massachusett, Wampanoag, and Pawtucket land. A social justice communications writer and strategist, she spends her days writing truth to power. More at tamikobeyer.com.

RSVP Via English Connect

Join us for a virtual poetry reading and Q&A with poet Sarah Mangold. The event will conclude with a writing prompt for attendees.

Sarah Mangold (she/her) is the author of Her Wilderness Will Be Her Manners (Fordham University Press, 2021), selected by Cynthia Hogue for the POL Prize, Giraffes of Devotion (Kore Press, 2016), Electrical Theories of Femininity (Black Radish Books, 2015) and Household Mechanics (New Issues, 2002), selected by C.D. Wright for the New Issues Poetry Prize. She is the recipient of grants and residences from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Seattle Arts Commission, Artist Trust, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and MacDowell. She was the founder and editor of Bird Dog, a print journal of innovative writing and art, that published longer poems and work by new women writers (2000-2009).

Mangold's chapbooks include Birds I Recall (above/ground), A Copyist, an Astronomer, and a Calendar Expert, (above/ground), The Goddess Can Be Recognized By Her Step (dusie kollektiv), Cupcake Royale (above/ground), I Meant To Be Transparent (LRL e-editions), An Antenna Called the Body (LRL Textile Editions), Parlor (dusie kollektiv & above/ground), Picture Of The Basket (dusie kollektiv), Boxer Rebellion (gong), and Blood Substitutes (Potes & Poets).

Raised in Oklahoma, Mangold earned her BA in English Literature from the University of Oklahoma and MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University.

RSVP Via English Connect

Join us for a virtual poetry reading and Q&A with poet and organizer MARS.. The event will conclude with a writing prompt for attendees.

MARS. (they/them) is a writer and cultural organizer born and raised in Detroit. Their work has been published or is forthcoming in Obsidian Literature & Arts for the African Diaspora, Michigan Quarterly Review: The Mixtape, Foglifter Journal, Gertrude Press, and elsewhere. MARS is a 2021 Kresge Literary Arts Fellow and a 2019 Lambda Literary Art Emerging Writers Fellow in Poetry. MARS. works as Director of the Allied Media Conference.

RSVP Via English Connect

Join us for a virtual poetry reading and Q&A with poet José Olivarez. The event will conclude with a writing prompt for attendees.

José Olivarez (he/him) is a writer from Calumet City, IL.

RSVP Via English Connect

Join us for a virtual poetry reading and Q&A with poet Jake Skeets. The event will conclude with a writing prompt for attendees.

Jake Skeets (he/him/his) is the author of Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers, winner of the National Poetry Series, American Book Award, and Kate Tufts Discovery Award. His honors include a 92Y Discovery Prize, Mellon Projecting All Voices Fellowship, and Whiting Award. He is from the Navajo Nation and teaches at Diné College. 

RSVP via English Connect

Join us for a virtual poetry reading and Q&A with poet Craig Santos Perez. The event will conclude with a writing prompt for attendees.

Dr. Craig Santos Perez (he/him) is an indigenous Pacific Islander writer from Guåhan (Guam). He is the author of five books of poetry and the co-editor of five anthologies. He received an MFA in Creative Writing from the U of San Francisco and a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from U of California, Berkeley. He is a professor in the English department at the U of Hawai'i, Manoa, where he teaches poetry, Pacific literature, and the environmental humanities.

RSVP via English Connect

Join us for a virtual poetry reading and Q&A with poet and organizer Tawana Petty. The event will conclude with a writing prompt for attendees.

Tawana Petty (she/her) is a mother, social justice organizer, youth advocate, poet and author. She is intricately involved in water rights advocacy, data and digital privacy rights education and racial justice and equity work. She serves as the National Organizing Director at Data for Black Lives, former board member of the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership, co-founder and former editorial board member of Riverwise Magazine, former director of the Data Justice Program at Detroit Community Technology Project, former co-lead of Our Data Bodies, a convening member of the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition, a practitioner fellow with the Digital Civil Society Lab at the Stanford PACS, and director of Petty Propolis, a Black woman led artist incubator primarily focused on cultivating visionary resistance through poetry, literacy and literary workshops, anti-racism facilitation, and social justice initiatives. Tawana was named one of 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics in 2021.

RSVP via English Connect

Join us for a virtual poetry reading and Q&A with author and activist Stephen Kuusisto. The event will conclude with a writing prompt for attendees.

Stephen Kuusisto (he/him), who has been blind since birth, is the author of Have Dog, Will Travel: A Poet's Journey (Simon & Schuster, 2018); Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening (W. W. Norton & Company, 2006); and the memoir Planet of the Blind (Delta, 1998), a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year”. He has also published several poetry collections: Old Horse, What Is to Be Done? (Tiger Bark Press, 2020); Letters to Borges (Copper Canyon Press, 2013); and Only Bread, Only Light (Copper Canyon Press, 2000). Recognized by the New York Times as “a powerful writer with a musical ear for language and a gift for emotional candor,” Steve has made numerous appearances on programs including The Oprah Winfrey Show, Dateline NBC, National Public Radio and the BBC. A graduate of the “Writer’s Workshop” at the University of Iowa, and a Fulbright Scholar, Steve holds a University Professorship in the College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse University. He’s a recipient of a 2021 Guggenheim award in poetry. He speaks widely on poetry, diversity, disability, education, and public policy. His essays and poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and literary magazines including Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, Poetry, and Partisan Review.

RSVP Via English Connect

Join us for a virtual poetry reading and Q&A with poet George Abraham. The event will conclude with a writing prompt for attendees.

George Abraham (they/he) is a Palestinian American poet, writer, and engineer who was born and raised on unceded Timucuan lands (Jacksonville, FL). Their debut poetry collection Birthright (Button Poetry) won the Big Other Book Award and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. He is a board member for the Radius of Arab American Writers, and recipient of fellowships from The Arab American National Museum, The Boston Foundation, and Kundiman. His poetry and nonfiction have appeared in The Nation, The Paris Review, The American Poetry Review, Mizna, and elsewhere. A graduate of Swarthmore College and Harvard University, they are currently a Litowitz MFA+MA Candidate in poetry at Northwestern University.

RSVP Via English Connect

Join us for a virtual poetry reading with Jody Gladding. There will also be a Q&A with poet/performer Prof. Tracie Morris after the reading.

Jody Gladding is a poet and translator. She has published four collections of poetry, most recently the spiders my arms (Ahsahta Press, 2018). Her work has appeared widely in journals, including Best American Experimental Writing, Harvard Review, Orion, and Poetry International. She has translated more than thirty books from French, taught in the MFA Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and directed the Writing Program at Vermont Studio Center. Her awards include Dora Maar, MacDowell, and Stegner Fellowships, French-American Foundation Translation Prize, Whiting Writers’ Award, and Yale Younger Poets Prize. Her work explores the places where language and landscape converge.
CART will be provided.

Join us for a virtual poetry reading with Julian Talamantez Brolaski. There will also be a Q&A with poet/performer Prof. Tracie Morris after the reading.

Julian Talamantez Brolaski is a poet and musician, the author of Of Mongrelitude (Wave Books 2017), Advice for Lovers (City Lights 2012) and gowanus atropolis (Ugly Duckling Presse 2011), and coeditor of NO GENDER: Reflections on the Life & Work of kari edwards (Litmus Press 2009). Julian is the lead singer and songwriter in Juan & the Pines, and lives in Chumash territory in Goleta, California. CART will be provided.

Join us for a virtual poetry reading with Shelagh Patterson. There will also be a Q&A with poet/performer Prof. Tracie Morris after the reading.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, Shelagh Patterson is a poet, scholar, and activist. Their poems have appeared in anthologies, newspapers, magazines, journals, experimental theater, bureaucratic documents, and a feature film. Per has an MFA in creative writing from CUNY Hunter College, a PhD in English from the University of Pittsburgh, and is a Cave Canem fellow. Currently, she teaches at Montclair State University, and ze lives in Newark. CART will be provided.