Acre Books

CD Eskilson with Brody Parrish Craig
2025-03-22 18:00 - 19:30 (America/New_York) | MA
Join CD Eskilson, author of Scream / Queen, on Saturday, 3/22, for a reading with poet Brody Parrish Craig at Paper Hearts Bookstore, located at 420 E 21st Street in Pettaway Square in Little Rock, Arkansas.
CD Eskilson is a trans nonbinary poet, editor, and literary translator. Their work appears in Kenyon Review, The Offing, Pleiades, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Ninth Letter, Passages North, and others. They are a recipient of the C.D. Wright / Academy of American Poets Prize and have been nominated for Best of the Net, Best New Poets, and the Pushcart Prize. Their debut poetry collection, Scream / Queen, is forthcoming from Acre Books in 2025. Modern Woman, CD’s translation of Finland-Swedish poet Edith Södergran’s groundbreaking 1916 poetry collection, will be published by World Poetry Books in 2026. Once, they were in a punk band.
Brody Parrish Craig (they/them) is the author The Patient is an Unreliable Historian and Boyish, which won the 2019 Omnidawn Poetry Chapbook Contest. Their writing has been published in Muzzle Magazine, Poetry, Mississippi Review, New South, Missouri Review, and TYPO, among others. They are the editor of TWANG, a regional anthology of trans and gender nonconforming creators from the South and Midwest. A 2022 recipient of Artist 360’s Community Activator Award, Craig currently co-leads TLGBQ+ community arts programming in the Ozarks.

CD Eskilson at Dog Ear Books
2025-03-22 14:00 - 15:30 (America/New_York) | MA
Join CD Eskilson, author of Scream / Queen, on Saturday, 3/22, for an afternoon reading at Dog Ear Books, Russellville’s only independent bookstore since 2016, located at 312 W 2nd Street.
CD Eskilson is a trans nonbinary poet, editor, and literary translator. Their work appears in Kenyon Review, The Offing, Pleiades, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Ninth Letter, Passages North, and others. They are a recipient of the C.D. Wright / Academy of American Poets Prize and have been nominated for Best of the Net, Best New Poets, and the Pushcart Prize. Their debut poetry collection, Scream / Queen, is forthcoming from Acre Books in 2025. Modern Woman, CD’s translation of Finland-Swedish poet Edith Södergran’s groundbreaking 1916 poetry collection, will be published by World Poetry Books in 2026. Once, they were in a punk band.

CD Eskilson with Julia Paganelli Marín
2025-03-20 19:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | MA
Join CD Eskilson, author of Scream / Queen, on Thursday, 3/20, for a reading and conversation with poet Julia Paganelli Marín at Pearl’s Books, located at 28 E Center Street, just off the downtown square in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
CD Eskilson is a trans nonbinary poet, editor, and literary translator. Their work appears in Kenyon Review, The Offing, Pleiades, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Ninth Letter, Passages North, and others. They are a recipient of the C.D. Wright / Academy of American Poets Prize and have been nominated for Best of the Net, Best New Poets, and the Pushcart Prize. Their debut poetry collection, Scream / Queen, is forthcoming from Acre Books in 2025. Modern Woman, CD’s translation of Finland-Swedish poet Edith Södergran’s groundbreaking 1916 poetry collection, will be published by World Poetry Books in 2026. Once, they were in a punk band.
Julia Paganelli Marín lives and writes in Northwest Arkansas and earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arkansas in 2018. She has six years of teaching experience at the college and high school levels, which includes creative writing and nonfiction essay writing. In addition to her chapbook, Blush Less (Finishing Line Press, 2015), she has work published in The Journal, Zone 3, Passages North, BOAAT Journal and more. In March 2022, she took part in Northwest Arkansas’ Open Mouth poetry residency at Mt. Sequoyah.

Book Launch: Scream / Queen
2025-03-19 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Skylight Books, 1818 NORTH VERMONT AVE, Los Angeles, CA, 90027, United States

NEPC Reading with Carolyn Oliver
2025-02-23 15:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | Salisbury House, 61 Harvard Street, Worcester, MA, 01609
Join the New England Poetry Club, in partnership with the Worcester County Poetry Association, for a free public reading at the historic Salisbury House, located at 61 Harvard Street in Worcester, Mass.
Filmmaker and photographer Carla Schwartz’s poems have appeared in The Practicing Poet (Diane Lockward, ed.) and in her collections Signs of Marriage (Finishing Line), Intimacy with the Wind (Finishing Line), and Mother, One More Thing (Turning Point). Learn more at carlapoet.com, or find her on X, YouTube, Threads, BlueSky, or Instagram all @cb99videos. Recent and future curations include Banyan Review, Cutthroat, Contemporary Haibun Online, Gone Lawn, great weather for MEDIA, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Modern Haiku, New-Verse News, One Art Haiku Anthology, Paterson Literary Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Sheila-Na-Gig, Spank the Carp, Stone Poetry Quarterly, Triggerfish Critical Review, The MacGuffin, Worcester Review, and Leon. Schwartz’s poem “Pat Schroeder Was Our Mother” won the 2023 New England Poetry Club E.E. Cummings Prize.
Carolyn Oliver is the author of The Alcestis Machine (Acre, 2024); Inside the Storm I Want to Touch the Tremble (University of Utah Press, 2022), selected by Matthew Olzmann for the Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry; and three chapbooks, including, most recently, Night Ocean (Seven Kitchens Press, 2023), which was selected for the Rane Arroyo Series. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Poetry Daily, TriQuarterly, Copper Nickel, Image, Consequence, and elsewhere. Her work has been supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council and by Mount Auburn Cemetery’s artist-in-residence program. Her honors include the Goldstein Prize from Michigan Quarterly Review, the NEPC’s E. E. Cummings Prize, and the Frank O’Hara Prize from The Worcester Review. Born in Buffalo and raised in Ohio, she now lives with her family in Massachusetts.
Anne Elezabeth Pluto grew up in Brooklyn, NY before it was cool. She is Professor of Literature and Theatre at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. She is an alumna of Shakespeare & Company and was a member of the Worcester Shakespeare Company 2011 – 2016. She was a member of the Boston small press scene in the late 1980s and is one of the founders and editors at Nixes Mate Review and Nixes Mate Books. She has two full-length collections The Deepest Part of Dark (Unlikely Stories Press, 2020) and How Many Miles to Babylon? (Lily Books, 2023).

Online Reading: Carolyn Oliver with Hannah Larrabee
2025-01-28 19:30 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | MA
Poets Carolyn Oliver, author of The Alcestis Machine, and Hannah Larrabee will read from their respective collections and discuss both creativity and craft.
These poets share a reverence for science and deep wonder for–and curiosity in–the world (both seen and unseen). Hannah says: “We’re hoping to geek out a bit about science and plan to talk through poems that explore the spellbinding world around us–here, on Earth, and in the cosmos.”
Carolyn adds: “It’s such luck to call Hannah my friend, and I look forward to talking about space and darkness and flowers (and perhaps a tree frog or two?) with this kind and wise and luminous poet.”
Presented by The Notebooks Collective. Click here for tickets.
Carolyn Oliver is the author of The Alcestis Machine (Acre Books, 2024), Inside the Storm I Want to Touch the Tremble (University of Utah Press, 2022; selected for the Agha Shahid Ali Prize), and three chapbooks, including, most recently, Night Ocean (Seven Kitchens Press, 2023). Her poems appear or are forthcoming in TriQuarterly, Image, Copper Nickel, Poetry Daily, Consequence, and elsewhere. Born in Buffalo and raised in Ohio, she now lives in Massachusetts.
Hannah Larrabee’s Wonder Tissue won the Airlie Press Poetry Prize and her new book—The Observable Universe—was longlisted for a Massachusetts Book Award. Hannah was selected by NASA to write poetry for the Webb Telescope program at Goddard Space Center and she participated in the Arctic Circle Residency in Svalbard. She’s had poems and reviews in Whale Road, EcoTheo, Adirondack Review, and Glass Poetry Journal, among others. Hannah lives in Salem, Massachusetts and is an editor at Nixes Mate Review.

Book Launch: Nothing Vast
2024-10-15 19:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | Stay Gold Books, 1104 S Braddock Ave Right, Pittsburgh, PA, 15218, United States
Celebrate the launch of Moshe Zvi Marvit’s debut novel Nothing Vast with a reading and book signing hosted by Stay Gold Books, located at 1104 S Braddock Ave, in the heart of Pittsburgh’s Regent Square neighborhood.
Based on the experiences and traditions of the author’s own half-Arab Jewish family, Nothing Vast spans the years 1932 to 1973, following two families filled with Zionists, anti-Zionists, socialists, and reactionaries. Delving deeply into the circumstances and concerns of Jews in cities across the globe—in Poland, France, Morocco, and the United States—as well as in Israel, Marvit braids stories of migration and struggle, of custom and superstition, of long-held secrets and lies. Visceral, intellectual, and searching, Nothing Vast is nothing short of a virtuosic debut.
“A beautifully written novel about Zionism as an idea, Israel as a reality, and how the distance between the two shapes Jewish lives.”—Peter Beinart, author of The Crisis of Zionism
Moshe Zvi Marvit’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, The New Republic, Dissent Magazine, In These Times, The American Prospect, The Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. He has been awarded the Sidney Hillman Prize, The Ken May Media Award, a Mesa Refuge Writing Residency, and was shortlisted for the Studs Terkel Prize. Marvit lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Cincy Bookstore Crawl
2024-10-04 11:00 - 2024-10-06 17:00 (America/New_York) | MA
Spend the weekend at more than 16 participating independent bookstores in and around Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. Collect stamps at each store and earn entries to win prizes. You can find more information about how to participate here.
This second annual Cincy Bookstore Crawl features friends of the press who have supported and partnered with Acre in the past, including Downbound Books (4139 Apple St) and Joy & Matt’s Books (915 Vine St). Look out for our titles on their shelves!

Author Reading: Carolyn Oliver
2024-09-24 19:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | MA
Join Carolyn Oliver for an online reading of poems from her forthcoming collection, The Alcestis Machine (October 2024).
Presented as part of the Worcester Community Poetry Association’s Thirsty Lab Reading Series. Please Click Here to register.
Carolyn Oliver is the author of The Alcestis Machine (Acre Books, 2024), Inside the Storm I Want to Touch the Tremble (University of Utah Press, 2022; selected for the Agha Shahid Ali Prize), and three chapbooks, including, most recently, Night Ocean (Seven Kitchens Press, 2023). Her poems appear or are forthcoming in TriQuarterly, Image, Copper Nickel, Poetry Daily, Consequence, and elsewhere. Born in Buffalo and raised in Ohio, she now lives in Massachusetts.

Jessica E. Johnson at The Reading Den, Denver
2024-08-28 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Denver) | MA
August 28: The Reading Den Series with Ananda Lima, Raksha Vasudevan, Ashley Howell Bunn, Jessica E. Johnson, and Brianna Wheeler
August 28, 2024 at Fort Greene, 321 E 45th Ave, Denver, CO 80216

Jessica E. Johnson Book Launch: Elliot Bay Book Company
2024-07-02 19:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | Elliot Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Ave, Seattle, WA, 98122, United States
Seattle Book Launch: Mettlework
Tuesday, July 2nd, at 7:00 pm PST
Elliot Bay Book Company (1521 10th Ave.), Seattle, WA
Jessica E. Johnson launches her debut memoir with the help of memoirist and friend of the store Jen Soriano. Mettlework tells the story of Johnson’s unusual upbringing during the 1970s and ’80s, interwoven with the story of her transition to parenthood in post-recession Portland, Oregon.

Book Launch: Mettlework
2024-05-29 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | MA
Book Launch: Mettlework
Wednesday, May 29th, at 7:00 pm PST
Powell’s CIty of Books (1005 W. Burnside St.), Portland, OR
Celebrate the release of Jessica E. Johnson’s debut memoir Mettlework: A Mining Daughter on Making Home. Jessica will be joined in conversation by Lydia Kiesling, author of Mobility and The Golden State.
“In Jessica E. Johnson’s Mettlework we encounter the weight of inheritance—of being a daughter, a new mother, and the legacy of mining that is never far from the author’s mind. Emotionally and geographically wide-ranging, rich in history and the weight of work that unmakes the world, Mettlework is a story of how our families—who they are, what work they do—shape us even as we hope to create new stories of what family and home can and could be.”
—Taylor Brorby, author of Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land
“Mettlework is a precise, lyrical, and searching memoir that interrogates how we love the people who came before us even as they ruined the very land we live on. Johnson has a poet’s heart and an oral storyteller’s magnetism.”
—Emma Copley Eisenberg, author of Housemates and The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia

Book Launch: Sleepaway
2024-04-23 18:30 - 20:00 (America/Chicago) | Basket Books & Art, 115 Hyde Park Blvd, Houston, TX, 77006, United States
Basket Books & Arts (115 Hyde Park Blvd), Houston, TX
Celebrate the release of poet Kevin Prufer’s debut novel, Sleepaway. Featuring a reading and book signing by the author.
It’s 1984, and the invisible mists are falling, mists that cause people to slip into dreamless slumber—sleeps from which most, but not all, awaken. Those who do wake live in fear of the next mist, and the next, each a little longer and more dangerous than the last.
Alternating between the perspectives of a kleptomaniac waitress named Cora and her nine-year-old friend Glass, Sleepaway depicts a small-town America turned alarming. This is a place where loved ones are lost to a state between life and death; where denial, delusion, and desperation take hold of those remaining; where dealers of the antisleep drug Eight Track disappear into shadows, and a murderous wannabe kingpin hunts for victims.
As civilization is shaved away one sleep storm at a time, people struggle to go on, making and losing allies and discovering new strengths and weaknesses. Cora sets out on an ill-fated road trip hoping to reclaim her sister’s love, only to discover a more powerful bond than blood. Glass, having lost his only parent to one of the first mists, searches for a stability he has never had and may never achieve. All the while, buildings rise outside town to cope with the mounting number of sleepers. Some see them as hospitals, others as repositories, and yet soon the air around them fills with ash.
An allegory for post-pandemic America, Sleepaway grapples with questions concerning friendship, race, and family amid the horror of inexplicable, arbitrary annihilation.

Meet the Author: Adrianne Harun
2024-03-30 18:00 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | MA
Meet the Author: Adrianne Harun
Saturday, March 30th, at 6:00 pm PST
Northwest Maritime Center (431 Water St), Port Townsend, WA
The City of Port Townsend has proclaimed March “Reading Month” and selected On The Way to the End of the World by Acre author Adrianne Harun as its 2024 Community Read! Organized by the Port Townsend Public Library, Community Read offers a month of free events designed to promote community ties through the shared experience of reading one book and exploring its ideas and topics through discussion groups, guided hikes, and a modified 50-mile Big Walk challenge inspired by the novel.
Join Adrianne Harun on March 30th for a presentation and reading of On The Way to the End of the World, hosted at the Northwest Maritime Center. This event will be followed by an author signing with books for sale provided by Imprint Bookstore.

Book Launch: Bad Mexican, Bad American
2024-03-09 17:00 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | MA
Book Launch: Bad Mexican, Bad American
Saturday, March 9th, at 5:00 pm PST
Libros Lincoln Heights Bookstore (3422 N. Broadway), Los Angeles, CA
Celebrate the launch of Jose Hernandez Diaz’s debut full-length collection Bad Mexican, Bad American at The Libros Lincoln Heights bookstore, featuring readings by local authors Arthur Kayzakian, Casandra Hernandez Rios, Crystal AC Salas, and Mauricio Moreno.
“Hernandez Diaz’s reflective debut engages with themes of identity and cultural hybridity, interrogating the concept of self-awareness against the perceptions of others. . . Revealing how past experiences, dreams, and personal interactions shape one’s sense of self, these varied poems resonate.”
—Publishers Weekly
You can read Jose’s latest interviews featuring Bad Mexican, Bad American in the Latin American Review of Books and Laurel Review.

AWP Panel ft C.T. Salazar: Queer Poets Thriving in the Red
2024-02-10 15:20 - 16:35 (America/Chicago) | Kansas City Convention Center, 301 W 13th St #100, Kansas City, MO, 64105
Not Just Surviving: Queer Poets Thriving in the Red
Room 2103B, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level
When discussing what queer folks under attack in “red” states should do, one thing is always suggested: leave. While it may be ideal for some, for many, leaving means abandoning not only loved ones, but also their homes. Queer folks have always loved, lived, and created in hostile places, and fleeing is not something everyone can or even wants to do. In this panel, queer poets in or from deep red states talk and write through complex loves of home and the joys that can still be cultivated there.
Featuring Headless John the Baptist Hitchhiking author C.T. Salazar, Brody Parrish Craig, Steve Bellin-Oka, Bleah Patterson, Raye Hendrix.

Moderator: Bleah Patterson (she/her) is a queer poet and writer, born and raised in Texas. She is a current MFA candidate at Sam Houston State University where she works as a publishing fellow for the Texas Review Press.

Panelists:

C.T. Salazar is a poet and librarian from Mississippi. He’s the author of Headless John the Baptist Hitchhiking (Acre Books 2022) and three previous chapbooks, most recently American Cavewall Sonnets (Bull City Press 2021).

Brody Parrish Craig (they/them) is the author of Boyish and editor of Twang, a regional anthology of TGNC creators of the South/Midwest US. Their poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Magazine, Mississippi Review, Muzzle Magazine, and beestung, amongst others. They live in Arkansas.

Steve Bellin-Oka’s first book of poems Instructions for Seeing a Ghost won the Vassar Miller Prize. He is also the author of four chapbooks, including Tell Me Exactly What You Saw and What You Think It Means, which won the Blue Mountain Review LGBQT+ Chapbook Prize. He is a Tulsa Artists Fellow.

Raye Hendrix is the author of Fire Sermons (Ghost City Press) and the winner of the Keene Prize for Literature and the Patricia Aakhus Award. She is the poetry editor of Press Pause Press and a PhD student at the University of Oregon, studying the intersections of poetry, disability, and deafness.

AWP Panel ft Hugh Sheehy: Publishing with a Small Press
2024-02-09 13:45 - 15:00 (America/Chicago) | Kansas City Convention Center, 301 W 13th St #100, Kansas City, MO, 64105
Independence with Independents: Making the Most of Publishing with a Small Press
Room 2103C, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level
While independent presses may not offer the big money of the Big Five publishers, publishing with IPs can offer significant benefits, including freedom with content, form, style, and objectives, as well as (some) control during production and marketing. Working with IPs also require more effort and responsibility from writers. Having published with ten IPs, with diverse missions, from social justice to experimental form, we discuss the strategies, challenges, and delights of working with IPs.
Featuring Design Flaw author Hugh Sheehy, Karen Lee Boren, Dionne Irving-Bremyer, Matt Roberson, and Hasanthika Sirisena.

Moderator: Karen Lee Boren has written the books Secret Waltz, Mother Tongue, and Girls in Peril, a Barnes and Noble Discover selection. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and is the winner of the 2018 Wundor Editions Fiction Prize. She has an MFA from Wichita State University and a PhD from the University of Wisconsin.

Panelists:

Dionne Irving is originally from Toronto, Ontario. She is the author of Quint (7.13 Books) and The Islands (Catapult). Her work has appeared in Story, Boulevard, Lit Hub, Missouri Review, and New Delta Review. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Notre Dame.

Matthew Roberson has authored three novels, 1998.6, Impotent, and List (FC2) and is editor of a critical book, Musing the Mosaic (SUNY). His short fiction has appeared in journals such as Fourteen Hills, Fiction International, and Western Humanities Review. He teaches at Central Michigan University.

Hasanthika Sirisena’s work has recently appeared in Electric Literature, Lit Hub, Georgia Review, and has been named notable by Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays. Their essay collection Dark Tourist (Mad Creek Books, 2022) was a finalist for a 2022 Lambda Literary Award.

Hugh Sheehy is the author of two short story collections, Design Flaw (Acre Books) and The Invisibles (2012 Flannery O’Connor Award, University of Georgia). He teaches at Ramapo College.

AWP Conference Reading ft Carolyn Oliver
2024-02-09 10:35 - 11:50 (America/Chicago) | Kansas City Convention Center, 301 W 13th St #100, Kansas City, MO, 64105
Women of New Fabulism and Speculative Literature: A Reading

Room 3501AB, Kansas City Convention Center, Level 3
Fabulism and speculative literature have long employed the bizarre, unexpected, and impossible to better reflect human experience. Recent political and societal changes, such as anti-trans laws, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and the attack on no-fault divorce make the seemingly impossible much more expected, and these genres feel increasingly relevant and prescient. Join us for a reading by writers who use the weird to reflect on what it means to be female in an increasingly fraught world.
Featuring The Alcestis Machine author Carolyn Oliver, Sarah Kain Gutowski, Nic Anstett, Aimee Parkison, and Chloe Chun Seim.

Moderator: Sarah Kain Gutowski is the author of two books, The Familiar, a fabulist narrative-in-poems about female midlife, and Fabulous Beast: Poems, winner of the 14th annual National Indies Excellence Award for Poetry. With artist Meredith Starr, she is cocreator of Every Second Feels Like Theft.
Readers:

Carolyn Oliver is the author of The Alcestis Machine (Acre Books, forthcoming 2024), Inside the Storm I Want to Touch the Tremble (University of Utah Press, 2022; Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry), and three chapbooks. She lives in Massachusetts.

Nic Anstett, a trans speculative writer from Baltimore, Maryland, is a graduate from the University of Oregon’s MFA program and has attended workshops through Tin House, Lambda Literary, and the Clarion Foundation. Her work appears in One Story, Witness magazine, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere.

Aimee Parkison is the author of Suburban Death Project and Refrigerated Music for a Gleaming Woman, which won the Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize. Parkison teaches in the creative writing program at Oklahoma State University and has published eight books of fiction.

Chloe Chun Seim’s work has appeared in LitMag, Split Lip Magazine, Free State Review, and others. She earned her MFA from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Her novel, Churn, won the George Garrett Fiction Prize and is due out from Texas Review Press in November 2023. She lives in Lawrence, Kansas.

AWP Panel ft. Jose Hernandez Diaz: Against Tradition
2024-02-09 10:35 - 11:50 (America/Chicago) | Kansas City Convention Center, 301 W 13th St #100, Kansas City, MO, 64105
The Against Tradition Tradition: Contradiction & the Prose Poem
Room 2504AB, Kansas City Convention Center, Level 2
Originating in nineteenth-century France as a subversive form “supple . . . and rugged enough to adapt . . . to the lyrical impulses of the soul,” prose poems are now taught in writing classrooms across the globe. Has their popularity changed their capacity for surprise, radicalism, and (non)sense? How are contemporary poets troubling the contradictions inherent in the form’s name? This diverse panel of poets will consider these questions and trace their relationships to the indefinable prose poem.
Featuring Bad Mexican, Bad American author Jose Hernandez Diaz, Leslie Sainz, Dana Levin, Sophie Klahr, and Olatunde Osinaike.

Moderator: Leslie Sainz is the author of Have You Been Long Enough at Table (Tin House, 2023). The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, CantoMundo, and The Stadler Center for Poetry & Literary Arts at Bucknell University, she is the managing editor of the New England Review.
Panelists:

Dana Levin’s fifth book is Now Do You Know Where You Are, a 2022 NYT Notable Book. She is coeditor of a book on poet Bert Meyers for the Unsung Masters Series (Pleiades 2023). A Whiting and Guggenheim Fellow, Levin serves as Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Maryville University in Saint Louis.

Sophie Klahr is the author of Two Open Doors In a Field (Backwaters Press, 2023) and Meet Me Here At Dawn (YesYes Books), and coauthor of There is Only One Ghost in the World (Fiction Collective 2, 2023) with Corey Zeller. She lives in Los Angeles.

Jose Hernandez Diaz is an NEA fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (TRP, 2020). His work appears in American Poetry Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, Yale Review, and in The Best American Nonrequired Reading. He has facilitated workshops for The Writer’s Center, Beyond Baroque, Litro magazine, and elsewhere.

Olatunde Osinaike is a Nigerian-American poet, essayist, and software developer originally from the West Side of Chicago. He is the author of Tender Headed (Akashic Books, 2023), winner of the National Poetry Series. His work has received support from Hurston/Wright Foundation and Poets & Writers.

AWP Panel ft Kevin Prufer: Draft, Draft, Goose
2024-02-09 10:35 - 11:50 (America/Chicago) | Kansas City Convention Center, 301 W 13th St #100, Kansas City, MO, 64105
Draft, Draft, Goose: The Thinking Behind Revising
Room 2105, Kansas City Convention Center, Street Level
In this panel, five distinguished writers will each share a draft of a published piece along with its final version, and discuss the decisions made to get there. We’ll consider the cascading effects of the smallest changes, and how to maintain the equilibrium and disequilibrium one seeks in a finished piece—as well as how to remain committed to surprise, endeavoring not to polish a piece of writing into mediocrity. Our goal will be practical: to show the thinking behind revising.
Featuring Sleepaway author Kevin Prufer, Jon Pineda, Alan Michael Parker, Sarah Perry, and Rone Shavers.
Moderator: Alan Michael Parker is the author of four novels and eight books of poetry, and a weekly cartoonist for the online journal Identity Theory. His next book will be a collection of Bingo cards and flash, Bingo Bango Boingo (Dzanc, 2024). He holds the Houchens Chair in English at Davidson College.

Panelists:
Jon Pineda is the author of the novels Let’s No One Get Hurt and Apology. His recent poetry collection, Little Anodynes, received the 2016 Library of Virginia Literary Award, and his memoir Sleep in Me was a 2010 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. He teaches at William & Mary.

Kevin Prufer’s ninth book of poetry is The Fears (Copper Canyon, 2023). His first novel, Sleepaway, will be published by Acre Books in 2024. He is professor of English in the creative writing program at the University of Houston and also teaches in the Lesley University low-residency MFA program.

Sarah Perry is the author of Sweet Nothings, an essay collection about the pleasures of candy (Mariner 2024), and the true crime memoir After the Eclipse (HMH 2017), a Poets & Writers Notable Nonfiction Debut. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of North Texas.
An associate professor of English at Saint Rose since 2008, Rone Shavers teaches creative writing and contemporary literature. He holds an MFA from The New School and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago, writes fiction and nonfiction, and has written for several art magazines.

AWP Panel ft Jessica E. Johnson & Tomas Moniz: Intro Forever
2024-02-08 15:20 - 16:35 (America/Chicago) | Kansas City Convention Center, 301 W 13th St #100, Kansas City, MO, 64105
Intro Forever: Mapping the Creative and Pedagogical Terrain of Community Colleges

Room 2502A, Kansas City Convention Center, Level 2
Though community colleges typically enroll around forty percent of United States undergraduates, they are seldom discussed as sites of knowledge production or expertise. Panelists—active writers and community college professors—will talk about the pedagogical and creative implications of open access and community immersion; the knowledges, processes, and forms that emerge from teaching introductory courses; and career sustainability with heavy course loads and limited or nonexistent research support.
Featuring Jessica E. Johnson, author of Mettlework and Metabolics, Tomas Moniz, author of Big Familia, Janice Lobo Sapigao, Shannon Gibney, and Megan Savage.

Moderator: Jessica E. Johnson (she/they) writes poetry and nonfiction. She is the author of Metabolics, a book-length poem, and In Absolutes We Seek Each Other, an Oregon Book Award finalist. They teach poetry, creative nonfiction, composition, and environmental literature at Portland Community College.

Panelists:

Janice Lobo Sapigao (she/her) is a poet from San José, CA. She is the author of two books of poetry, microchips for millions (Philippine American Writers and Artists, Inc., 2016) and like a solid to a shadow (Nightboat Books, 2022). She was the 2020–21 Santa Clara County Poet Laureate.

Shannon Gibney is a writer, educator, activist, and the author of Dream Country (Dutton, 2018), and See No Color (Carolrhoda Lab, 2015), young adult novels that won the 2016 and 2019 Minnesota Book Awards in Young Peoples’ Literature, respectively. Gibney is faculty at Minneapolis College.

Tomas Moniz’s debut novel, Big Familia, was a finalist for the 2020 PEN/Hemingway, the LAMBDA, and the Foreward Indies Awards. He edited the popular Rad Dad zine for over a decade and the book Rad Families. He’s a 2020 Artist Affiliate for Headlands Center for Arts and 2022 UCross Resident.

Megan Savage is a widely published multi-genre writer and instructor at Portland Community College, where she teaches editing and publishing and cocoordinates the Carolyn Moore Writing Residency. She holds an MFA in fiction from Indiana University where she was fiction editor of Indiana Review.

AWP Conference Reading ft Kevin Prufer: Unsung Masters
2024-02-08 12:10 - 13:25 (America/Chicago) | Kansas City Convention Center, 301 W 13th St #100, Kansas City, MO, 64105
The Unsung Masters Reading
Room 2502B, Kansas City Convention Center, Level 2
Each year, the Unsung Masters Series publishes a book devoted to the life and work of a great but little known author. Volumes include large selections of the author’s work printed alongside interviews, articles, drafts, photographs, and ephemera. This reading brings together the editors of four recent volumes who will read from the work of poets Shreela Ray, Tom Postell, Bert Meyers, and Laura Hershey. This event should lead to great discoveries for those who attend.
Featuring Sleepaway author Kevin Prufer, UC’s Eliston Poetry Library curator Michael Peterson, Niki Herd, Kazim Ali, and Dana Levin.

Moderator: Kevin Prufer’s ninth book of poetry is The Fears (Copper Canyon, 2023). His first novel, Sleepaway, will be published by Acre Books in 2024. He is professor of English in the creative writing program at the University of Houston and also teaches in the Lesley University low-residency MFA program.

Readers:
Niki Herd is the author of the chapbook don’t you weep, and two poetry collections: The Language of Shedding Skin and The Stuff of Hollywood, which is forthcoming. Herd coedited Laura Hershey: On the Life & Work of an American Master. She lives in St. Louis and teaches at Washington University.

Michael C. Peterson serves as curator of the Elliston Poetry Room and archive at the University of Cincinnati. He’s a poet, the recipient of fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell, and Vermont Studio Center, and is an editor of Tom Postell: On the Life and Work of an Unsung Master (Pleiades, 2024).

Kazim Ali’s most recent books are Sukun: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan) and the novel Indian Winter (Coach House). He is a professor of literary arts and chair of the Department of Literature at the University of California, San Diego. He is the founding editor of Nightboat Books.

Dana Levin’s fifth book is Now Do You Know Where You Are, a 2022 NYT Notable Book. She is coeditor of a book on poet Bert Meyers for the Unsung Masters Series (Pleiades 2023). A Whiting and Guggenheim Fellow, Levin serves as Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Maryville University in Saint Louis.

Matthew Minicucci at the James Merrill House
2023-12-17 01:00 - 15:00 (America/New_York) | MA
Book Signing & Reading with Former Merrill Fellow Matthew Minicucci

JAMES MERRILL HOUSE

VISITORS CENTER

107 Water Street, Stonington CT

Adrianne Harun at Powell's Books
2023-12-05 19:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W. Burnside St., Portland, OR, United States
A reading at Powell’s City of Books (1005 W. Burnside St., Portland) on December 5th @ 7 PM

Online Reading with Dan O'Brien
2023-12-05 14:00 - 15:00 (America/New_York) | MA
Join poet and playwright Dan O’Brien live online at his home in California for an evening (or morning) of poetry, prose and performance with The Butcher’s Dozen, a monthly series curated by London-based writer David Collard.
This is the first time in over 150 gatherings that the program will be devoted entirely to the work of one living author. The program will be in three parts, opening with a reading from Survivor’s Notebook, then the memoir From Scarsdale, and capped by a performance of excerpts from Dan’s forthcoming play Newtown. There will be time at the end for questions from the audience.
To register for this free event, please leave your email address in the comments section on the event page.

Visiting Writer at Franklin College
2023-11-28 | MA

Launch Party: Lindsey Harding
2023-11-15 19:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | Ciné Lab, 234 West Hancock Ave, Athens, GA, 30601, United States
Launch Party for PILGRIMS 2.0
Event date: Wednesday, November 15, 2023 – 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Event location: Ciné Lab, 234 West Hancock Ave, Athens, GA 30601

Reading: Dan O’Brien
2023-11-08 | MA
Reading @ University of Oregon
Wednesday • November 8, 2023

Visiting Writer at NMU w/ Christina Olson
2023-10-26 19:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | MA
Thursday October 26, 2023, 7-8pm, Northern Center Peninsula II – Visiting Writer at NMU w/ Christina Olson: https://nmu.edu/english/events

Local Book Launch: Matt Minicucci
2023-10-20 17:30 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | MA
October 20th – Local book launch at Ernest and Hadley Books in Tuscaloosa
Please be sure to RSVP on Eventbrite so we know how many chairs and snacks to provide! Thanks in advance –
