Grateful to my colleagues in Widener University's Wolfgram Memorial Library and Prof. Dana Reisboard for inviting me to speak on a panel about the dangers of banning books. Here's more about the event:

Lawmakers and parent groups are working to ban books that discuss historical times/events and personal lived experiences related to Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC), the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer/Questioning (LGBTQ) community, and other marginalized groups from classrooms and libraries. Simultaneously, protections from prosecution that teachers and librarians have had are being removed. Book bans stand in opposition to the main function of education, which is to teach students to think critically and to develop their own views about the world. It is natural for books to evoke strong emotions from readers, even distasteful ones, however, it is wrong to use these feelings to restrict the right to learn for all students.  Weaponizing and politicizing books with diverse content about diverse groups restricts all students from seeing and understanding the lived experiences and worldviews of people different from themselves, stunting their education.  John Culhane, Widener University, Jessica Guzman, Widener University, Trace Reed, Montgomery County District Librarian, and Sharon Ward, Education Law Center Senior Policy Advisor will discuss the danger censorship poses to students and society. 

Join us this Monday at 12:00 PM EST for "You Can't Read This: The True Dangers of Book Bans."

As chair of the new Poetry & Poetry Studies area for the Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association, I hope you will see the call for proposals and consider presenting at this year's conference, which will occur virtually on November 10-12, 2022. The Poetry & Poetry Studies area welcomes presentations examining all aspect of poetry, including critical perspectives on poetic craft and creative readings of original works. Visit Penn's Call for Papers to read the full CFP. 

Almost surreal to be attending this year's conference in the city I now call home. On Thursday, March 24, I'll be signing at Switchback Books' table (1339) in the book fair from 2:00-3:00 pm. You can also find me reading at the Switchback Books, Jellyfish Magazine, and Furniture Press Books offsite reading Friday, March 25, 7:00 pm at Stir Lounge in Rittenhouse Square. And if you haven't picked up a copy of ADELANTE, it and all Switchback Books titles will be $10 at the book fair, the Smol Fair, and in their online shop. Nervous but thrilled to see friends from near and far. Will you be there? Hope to see you.

Calling all poets! Submissions are open for Sweet: A Literary Confection's fifth annual poetry contest, and I will be serving as the final judge. Read the submission guidelines and submit your work through Sweet's Submittable. 

Thrilled to see "Ode at the Hospital," a poem from Adelante, featured on 1-Week Critique for their December Teaching Takeaway. 1-Week Critique is a nonprofit digital studio providing literary education and pedagogical support to writers of all genres and backgrounds. All my thanks to Jon Riccio, brilliant poet and generous reader, for his care with this poem. Read his observations on "Ode at the Hospital" and the archive of Teaching Takeaways. 

My poem, "Ode at the Hospital," is featured this week as part 14 of the Best American Poetry Blog's New York School Diaspora series. I am so grateful to the generous and brilliant Angela Ball for including this poem. Read the poem and her comments here. 

Happy to have read alongside Teo Mungaray and Scott Ennis at this year's Pop Culture Association Conference​ for the session "Ballads, Ventriloquism, & Dark Rides: Poems on the Edge of Enchantment." It was a pleasure to view a poem film, discuss Florida tourism, and hear a new phenomenological approach to reading poetry. Special thanks to Poetry Studies & Creative Poetry area chair Katie Manning for organizing!

A double-reading weekend! I will also be reading on Saturday, May 15th, at 3:00 PM EST as part of "Publishing in the Time of COVID: Local Writers With Books Out During the Pandemic" for the 215 Festival. Can't wait to read alongside Ted Rees, Emma Brown Sanders, Patrick Blagrave, Stephanie Cawley, Ashley Elizabeth, and Sebastian Castillo. Thank you, thank you, Alina Pleskova for inviting me to be a part of this excellent lineup (and organizing so many awesome events for the festival this year)!! Register for the reading at this link. 

About the reading: "While we were all trying to wrap our heads around this life-upending year, some amazing books of poetry and prose have been released from beloved local authors! This reading celebrates writers from the Philadelphia area, New Jersey, Maryland, and New York whose terrific books were published over the last year."

Excited to be reading alongside Erin Carlyle, Sumita Chakraborty, and Rebecca Morgan Frank for the Massachusetts Poetry Festival. Our reading, New Elegies, is scheduled for Friday, May 14th, at 12:30 PM EST. Register at festival.masspoetry.org. 

About New Elegies: "How do we turn grief into song? Four poets read from new collections that wrestle with the bounds and opportunities of the American elegy. A father’s illness and loss are relived through lyrics that draw vividly from the everyday landscapes of the kitchen, the hospital, and the surrounding Florida that a family of Cuban exiles calls home in Jessica Guzman’s Adelante. Sumita Chakraborty’s Arrow uses the long poem as a means for making meaning out of mourning for the premature death of her sister. An elegiac landscape of poor women and girls of the South is built across Erin Carlyle’s Southern-Gothic-infused Magnolia Canopy Underworld, as she excavates the forgotten and lost in the world of trailer parks and pain clinics, while Rebecca Morgan Frank’s Oh You Robot Saints! explores mortality through the figure of the automaton in the wake of her mother’s death."

I recently spoke with Matthew Schmidt from 1-Week Critique about my writing process for the poem "Predictions of the Material," which was originally published on the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day and appears in ADELANTE.

​1-Week Critique is a digital literary studio that offers incisive feedback on poetry and prose. In addition to these responses, the 1WC team hosts an interview series where they discuss the writing process with contemporary authors. Watch the interview to hear Matthew and I discuss revision, anaphora, the poetic line, grief, One Hundred Years of Solitude, my dog, and more. Thank you, Matthew, for your perceptive questions and generous reading!