Zoom: May 15-22

This Zoom Registration is for both May 15th events. Join us for either or both! HERE

Writers featured in the anthology “Here to Stay: Poetry and Prose from the Undocumented Diaspora” will read poems and engage in a conversation centering the undocumented experience. Undocupoets fellowship recipient Tobi Kassim, poet and playwright Jesús I. Valles, visual artist and healer féi hernandez, and Cornell MFA graduate Yessica Martinez will be featured.

This Zoom Registration is for both May 15th events. Join us for either or both! HERE

Join us for a group reading with local writers LA Bourgeois (essay from her humorous memoir, “Surviving Transformation”), Karel Hilversum (reflections from an Itharican), Akua Lezli Hope (speculative poetry), Bubblesz (A poem about resilience ), Sue Meredith Mann (The day the world changed: 3 perspectives), and Erica Rose Eberhart (excerpt from her fantasy debut “Tarnished”). 

This Zoom Registration is for both May 16th events. Join us for either or both! Register HERE

with Liz Ann Young, Jesse Gilleland, Joseph Heiland, Suzanne Richardson. Writers from outside urban centers and the dominant cultural hubs often face homogenizing power structures that tend to marginalize regional voices, shaping literary trends in ways that overlook or dilute the richness of place-based storytelling. Authentic regionalist writing pushes back against these conventions, offering a means of resistance while fostering solidarity and community among writers.
This panel/ reading brings together poets and prose writers from a range of landscapes across the American East, West, North, and South, including North Carolina, Montana, Kentucky, Florida, and New York. Their work reflects the complexities of regional identity, exploring themes of place and belonging, the deep ties between people and the land, and the nuances of existing within or outside a particular geography.
Writers will examine what it means to be from a place—and what it means to be in a place. These pieces amplify voices that challenge norms of belonging, celebrating the diversity and significance of regional literature in shaping broader literary landscapes.

This Zoom Registration is for both May 16th events. Join us for either or both! Register HERE

with Liz Ann Young, Sam Corradetti, Jordan Franklin, Shannon Hearn, Suzanne Richardson. In this poetry and prose reading, a diverse group of writers explores themes of visible and invisible wounds, conflicting bodies, and possible futures—both dystopian and utopian. Their work examines humanity’s relationship with nature, the complexities of intimacy in familial bonds and sexualities, and the intersections of gender identity and disability. Through ekphrasis, they engage with music, film, and visual art, while also reflecting on legacies, regional identities, and the tensions between past and future.
This event brings together writers from varied geographies, traditions, and lived experiences, amplifying voices from BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities. Their work challenges, inspires, and reimagines the world through multiple lenses, creating a rich literary tapestry that invites audiences into spaces of reflection, resistance, and renewal. Through poetry and prose, these writers forge new ways to engage with identity, history, and transformation—illuminating the power of language to interrogate, disrupt, and ultimately reimagine our collective stories.

Register for this Zoom event HERE

The reading of cross-casting, doubling, and paper cutout “puppetry” highlights a selected scene from an alien artist Yangzhou (Yao) Bian’s semi-autobiographic script, Daddy, An Un-Chinese Kid (previously named My “Green Card” Marriage), an otherly play developed in collaboration with New Jersey Play Lab. The discussion zooms in on the instability of affiliations and how national and transnational experiences transmutate and transform us from beings of whence to beings of convening/converging whereabouts. The featured artists include first-generation Haitian American poet-playwright-dramaturg Sandrine Dupiton, Ghanain actor-director Abdul Razak Mohammed, Mexican soprano Itzel Robles Valdez, Turkish filmmaker Süheyla Noyan, and Chinese writer-translator Yangzhou (Yao) Bian. The inter-cross/disciplinary collaborative brings intriguing questions about the performativity of creative writing, interactive and interpretive authorship.

This Zoom Registration is for both May 22 events. Join us for either or both! HERE

Translating text into images is a concept that enthralls filmmakers and challenges viewers. By collaborating with actors, crew, and the viewer, filmmakers strive to make a final product that takes the written word and shows strength, mystery, and truth in a new way. In this interactive panel, four filmmakers showcase their work and discuss how they convey stories about women, families, generational trauma, forgiveness, and LGBTQ+ issues visually in a thought-provoking, sensitive, and compelling manner. Participant questions for the panel will be encouraged. with E. Stuelke, Mara Alper. Karen Rodriquez, Lori Watt

This Zoom Registration is for both May 22 events. Join us for either or both! HERE

Join a group reading featuring current Poet Laureate Dan Rosenberg (poems concerned with husbandry and care) and past Poet Laureate’s Janie E. Bibbie (poems about wind and water), Melissa Tuckey (poems), Jack Hopper (poems), Gail Holst-Warhaft (poems about Gaza and Ithaca), and Katharyn Howd Machan (poems based on fairy tales).