Copper Canyon Press

Santa Monica College presents Literary Talks & Readings with Paisley Rekdal
2022-10-25 11:15 - 12:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | MI
Santa Monica College presents Literary Talks & Readings, October 25 11:15 – 12:30 PM PT, with Paisley Rekdal
From the organizers:
“Welcome to SMC! Have you wanted to listen to intriguing stories? Meet and talk with fascinating, creative artists? Enjoy poetry and richness of language? It has been a regular feature of life at SMC—every semester for the last 22 years. We have the opportunity to listen to a wide variety of award-winning authors who want to share their art and experience with the students. ”
Register here: https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/91098314478

John Freeman With Debra Gwartney at Elliot Bay Book Co.
2022-10-25 19:00 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Elliot Bay Book Company
Join John Freeman and Debra Gwartney for readings and a discussion of Wind, Trees.

John Freeman, Natalie Shapero, and Tayi Tibble Read at Diesel Bookstore
2022-10-27 18:30 - 19:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Diesel, A Bookstore, 225 26th St, Santa monica, CA, 90402
From the Organizers:
Join us on Thursday October 27th at 6:30pm as we welcome John Freeman, Tayi Tibble and Natalie Shapero to the store to read from and sign Wind, Trees and other selected works.
This event is free to attend and will be held in the courtyard at DIESEL, A Bookstore in Brentwood. Masks are required to attend.

John Freeman is the founder of Freeman’s, the literary annual of new writing, and executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf. His work includes the poetry collections Maps and The Park, the book-length essay Dictionary of the Undoing, and several anthologies, among them Tales of Two Americas, a volume on inequality in America, Tales of Two Planets, which examines the climate crisis globally, and There’s a Revolution Outside, My Love, coedited by Tracy K. Smith, a portrait of the United States on the cusp of revolution, climate crisis, and the upheavals of a pandemic. His work has been translated into over twenty languages, and his poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and ZYZZYVA. The former editor of Granta, he teaches at NYU and hosts the California Book Club, a monthly discussion of a book from California for Alta Journal.
In Wind, Trees, John Freeman presents a meditation on power and loss, change and adaptation. What can the trees teach us about inhabiting space together? What might we gain if we admit we do not control the wind, and cannot possibly carry all we’ve been handed? Offering a stark moral critique of pandemic self-preservation—as “justifications grew / with greed like vines / up the side of a tree / taking everything”—Wind, Trees joins the ranks of politically urgent yet timeless collections like The Lice by W.S. Merwin. Through narrative lyric and metaphysical pulse, meandering thought and punctuating quiet, Freeman studies the devastating failings of humanity and the redemptive possibilities of love.

Tayi Tibble (Te Whānau ā Apanui/Ngāti Porou) was born in 1995 and lives in Wellington, New Zealand. In 2017, she completed a master’s degree in creative writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University of Wellington, where she was the recipient of the Adam Foundation Prize in Creative Writing. Her second book of poetry, Rangikura, will be published in the United States in 2023.
Poukahangatus, the American debut of an acclaimed young poet as she explores her identity as a twenty-first-century Indigenous woman. Poem by poem, Tibble carves out a bold new way of engaging history, of straddling modernity and ancestry, desire and exploitation

Natalie Shapero is the author, most recently, of the poetry collection Popular Longing. Her previous collections are Hard Child, shortlisted for the International Griffin Poetry Prize, and No Object, winner of the Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award. Natalie’s writing has appeared in The Nation, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, The New York Times Magazine, and elsewhere. She teaches at UC Irvine.
The poems of Natalie Shapero’s third collection, Popular Longing, highlight the ever-increasing absurdity of our contemporary life. With her sharp, sardonic wit, Shapero deftly captures human meekness in all its forms: our senseless wars, our inflated egos, our constant deference to presumed higher powers―be they romantic partners, employers, institutions, or gods. “Why even / look up, when all we’ll see is people / looking down?” In a world where everyone has to answer to someone, it seems no one is equipped to disrupt the status quo, and how the most urgent topics of conversation can only be approached through refraction.

Cate Marvin and Randall Mann in Conversation with Michael Dumanis
2022-11-01 08:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Commons 326, North Bennington, VT
Cate Marvin and Randall Mann will have a discussion with Michael Dumanis as part of Bennington College’s Poetry at Bennington programs on Thursday, November 3 at 12 PM ET
From the Organizers:
OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | Randall Mann is a queer, multiracial poet, critic, and medical writer. He is the author of five books of poems, most recently Proprietary (Persea, 2017) and A Better Life (Persea, 2021). He is also the author of a book of criticism, essays, and interviews, The Illusion of Intimacy: On Poetry, and co-author of the textbook Writing Poems. His writing has appeared in Kenyon Review, LitHub, The Paris Review, Poetry, and The San Francisco Chronicle, and his books have been shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award, California Book Award, and Northern California Book Award. Mann’s Deal: New and Selected is forthcoming with Copper Canyon in 2023. He lives in San Francisco.
Cate Marvin is the author of four books of poetry, including Event Horizon (Copper Canyon, 2022) and Oracle (Norton), a New York Times Best Poetry Book of 2015. With poet Michael Dumanis, she is the co-editor of the anthology Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century (Sarabande, 2006). In 2009 Marvin co-founded VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts, an organization that seeks to “explore critical and cultural perceptions of writing by women” in contemporary culture. The recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, a Kate Tufts Discovery Prize, and a Whiting Writers’ Award, she teaches at the College of Staten Island and in the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast MFA program. She lives in Scarborough, Maine.
Contact:

Literature Programs
jessicalynn@bennington.edu
802-440-4376

Publishing in Transit: Copper Canyon Press Featuring Michael Wiegers, Ryo Yamaguchi, and Christopher Soto
2022-11-01 08:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | MI
Copper Canyon Executive Editor Michael Wiegers and Publicist Ryo Yamaguchi will join Cole Swensen for a virtual discussion which will be followed by a reading from Christopher Soto. This discussion is a part of The Brooklyn Rail’s Publishing in Transit series
From the Organizers:
Copper Canyon Press Executive Editor Michael Wiegers and Publicist Ryo Yamaguchi join Rail contributor Cole Swensen for a conversation. We conclude with a poetry reading from Christopher Soto.
Copper Canyon Press Executive Editor Michael Wiegers has been acquiring and editing books for the Press since 1993. He has edited two retrospective volumes of the poetry of Frank Stanford, including What About This, which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and received the Balcones Poetry Prize. He edited the anthologies The Poet’s Child and This Art, and translated poems for Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry, which he co-edited with Mónica de la Torre. He is also the poetry editor of Narrative and regularly speaks about the art of publishing at universities and colleges around the world. He is currently at work on a book about the poet W.S. Merwin.
Poet Ryo Yamaguchi is the author of The Refusal of Suitors (Noemi Press, 2015). He has worked in academic and literary publishing for presses such as Wave Books and the University of Chicago Press, and was a reviewer for Harriet Books. He is currently Publicist at Copper Canyon Press.
Poet Cole Swensen is the author of 17 volumes of poetry and a collection of critical essays, Noise That Stays Noise. A book of hybrid poem-essays, Art in Time, was published by Nightboat in 2021. A former Guggenheim Fellow, she has been a finalist for the National Book Award and has been awarded the Iowa Poetry Prize, the SF State Poetry Center Book Award, and the National Poetry Series. She has also translated over 20 volumes of poetry, prose, and art criticism from French and won the 2004 PEN USA Award in Literary Translation.

Christopher Soto with André Naffis-Sahely and Jenny Xie at Poetry in Aldeburgh Festival
2022-11-02 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | MI
Christopher Soto will read from his latest collection, Diaries of a Terrorist, and discuss poetry’s relationship to politics and the environment with Jenny Xie and André Naffis-Sahely.
Virtual event on Wednesday, November 2nd at 11 AM PT
From the Organizers: Join these three exciting poets as they discuss their latest collections, from André Naffis-Sahely’s reflections on class, race, and nationalism in High Desert, to Jenny Xie’s explorations of public secrecies, and the psychic fallout of the Chinese Cultural Revolution in The Rupture Tense and Christopher Soto’s uncompromising call for the abolition of policing and human caging in Diaries of a Terrorist.
Online events (Zoom) are free but donations requested.

Graywolf Press and Copper Canyon Press present Chelsea Harlan, Nicholas Goodly, and Courtney Faye Taylor
2022-11-02 17:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | MI
Graywolf Press and Copper Canyon Press present Chelsea Harlan, Nicholas Goodly, and Courtney Faye Taylor
Wednesday, November 2 at 5:15 Pacific Daylight Time
You’re Invited to a virtual Poetry Reading and Book Discussion with rising, debut authors: Chelsea Harlan, Courtney Faye Taylor, and Nicholas Goodly
Featuring

The first ever collaboration event between two of the United States’s premiere independent presses, Copper Canyon Press and Graywolf Press
Winner of The American Poetry Review’s 2022 First book Prize selected by Jericho Brown, Chelsea Harlan
Winner of Cave Canem’s 2021 Poetry Prize selected by Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Courtney Faye Taylor
A conversation between all three authors led by Copper Canyon Press publicist, Ryo Yamaguchi
A celebration of poetry’s future

Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_9lPmkollTuKUX5HX-hrShA

John Freeman and Forrest Gander At City Lights Bookstore
2022-11-02 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | City Lights Foundation, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco, CA, 94133
A reading and discussion of John Freeman’s forthcoming collection Wind, Trees. From the Organizers:
City Lights Foundation, in partnership with Alta Journal, presents John Freeman in a reading of new work and conversation with Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Forrest Gander. This free event celebrates Freeman’s new collection of poetry, Wind, Trees, published by Copper Canyon Press, and will take place in Jack Kerouac Alley, between City Lights and Vesuvio Cafe in San Francisco. Seating is on a first-come-first-served basis, and face masks are recommended.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
In Wind, Trees, John Freeman presents a meditation on power and loss, change and adaptation. What can the trees teach us about inhabiting space together? What might we gain if we admit we do not control the wind and cannot possibly carry all we’ve been handed? Offering a stark moral critique of pandemic self-preservation—as “justifications grew / with greed like vines / up the side of a tree / taking everything”—Wind, Trees joins the ranks of politically urgent yet timeless collections like The Lice, by W.S. Merwin. Through narrative lyric and metaphysical pulse, meandering thought and punctuating quiet, Freeman studies the devastating failings of humanity and the redemptive possibilities of love.
ABOUT THE GUESTS:
John Freeman is the founder of the literary annual Freeman’s and an executive editor at Knopf. His books include How to Read a Novelist and Dictionary of the Undoing as well as a trilogy of anthologies about inequality that he edited, among them Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation and Tales of Two Planets, which features dispatches from around the world, where the climate crisis has unfolded at crucially different rates. His poetry collections include Maps and The Park. His work has been translated into more than 20 languages and has appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, Orion, Zyzzyva, and Alta Journal. He is a former editor of Granta and an artist in residence at New York University.
Forrest Gander is a Pulitzer Prize–winning poet, author, translator, and essayist. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, fiction, and essays. Twice Alive is his latest collection of poetry. His translations include the work of Gozo Yoshimasu, Pablo Neruda, Alfonso D’Aquino, and Raúl Zurita. He has received numerous honors for his work, including the Pulitzer Prize for Be With and the Best Translated Book Award, as well as fellowships from the Library of Congress, the Guggenheim Foundation, and United States Artists. He makes his home in Northern California.

Randall Mann and Cate Marvin at Bennington College
2022-11-02 19:00 (America/New_York) | Tishman Lecture Hall, Bennington College Rd System, North Bennington, VT, 05257
Randall Mann and Cate Marvin will read poems at Bennington College on Wednesday November 2 at 7 PM ET. This reading will also be accessible via Zoom.
From the organizers:
OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | Randall Mann is a queer, multiracial poet, critic, and medical writer. He is the author of five books of poems, most recently Proprietary (Persea, 2017) and A Better Life (Persea, 2021). He is also the author of a book of criticism, essays, and interviews, The Illusion of Intimacy: On Poetry, and co-author of the textbook Writing Poems. His writing has appeared in Kenyon Review, LitHub, The Paris Review, Poetry, and The San Francisco Chronicle, and his books have been shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award, California Book Award, and Northern California Book Award. Mann’s Deal: New and Selected is forthcoming with Copper Canyon in 2023. He lives in San Francisco.
Cate Marvin is the author of four books of poetry, including Event Horizon (Copper Canyon, 2022) and Oracle (Norton), a New York Times Best Poetry Book of 2015. With poet Michael Dumanis, she is the co-editor of the anthology Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century (Sarabande, 2006). In 2009 Marvin co-founded VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts, an organization that seeks to “explore critical and cultural perceptions of writing by women” in contemporary culture. The recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, a Kate Tufts Discovery Prize, and a Whiting Writers’ Award, she teaches at the College of Staten Island and in the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast MFA program. She lives in Scarborough, Maine.

Facebook Event

Contact:

Literature Programs
jessicalynn@bennington.edu
802-440-4376

Living Room Craft Talks presents The Fifth Series with Chris Abani and Ellen Bass
2022-11-04 09:00 - 11:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | MI
Living Room Craft Talks presents The Fifth Series with Chris Abani and Ellen Bass
From the Organizers: “The Modern Elegy. Guest Poet: Chris Abani

No one wants to write an elegy.
–Kevin Young
The elegy is a poem of necessity. It may have been the first poetic speech, originating when our hunter-gatherer ancestors refused to leave their dead behind. The traditional elegy ritualizes grief, gives it language, and offers at least the beginnings of consolation. The modern elegy may do this as well, but, along with sorrow, there are often more complicated feelings: anger, conflict, guilt, and a resistance to solace. Elegies remember and celebrate our dead and make a space for them to live on the page. We’ll reflect on poems that approach the elegy from a wide range of experience and emotion and I’ll offer structures you can turn to when loss asks us to find words for the inexpressible.”

John Freeman with Meng Jin at Portland Book Festival
2022-11-05 17:00 - 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Brunish Theater, 4th Floor, 1111 SW Broadway, Portland, OR, 97205
John Freeman will read and be in conversation with Meng Jim on November 5th at 5 pm PST at the Brunish Theater in Portland.
From the Organizers:
Poet John Freeman and short story writer Meng Jin explore the isolation and search for connection of the past few years, through the quarantines of the pandemic and the political division of the previous administration. Moderated by Mindy Nettifee.
In Wind, Trees, John Freeman presents a meditation on power and loss, change and adaptation. What can the trees teach us about inhabiting space together? What might we gain if we admit we do not control the wind, and cannot possibly carry all we’ve been handed? Offering a stark moral critique of pandemic self-preservation, Wind, Trees joins the ranks of politically urgent yet timeless collections like The Lice by W.S. Merwin. Through narrative lyric and metaphysical pulse, meandering thought and punctuating quiet, Freeman studies the devastating failings of humanity and the redemptive possibilities of love.
Written during the turbulent years of the Trump administration and the first year of the pandemic, Meng Jin’s stories explore intimacy and isolation, coming-of-age and coming to terms with the repercussions of past mistakes, fraying relationships and surprising moments of connection. Moving between San Francisco and China, and from unsparing realism to genre-bending delight, Self-Portrait with Ghost considers what it means to live in an age of heightened self-consciousness, seemingly endless access to knowledge, and little actual power.
Portland Book Festival General Admission Passes are required for entry into all events. Passes are $15 in advance and $25 day of Festival. Youth 17 & under, or with a valid high school ID get in FREE. All full-priced General Admission Passes include a $5 book fair voucher and entry into Portland Art Museum. Passes admit attendees to the Festival; individual events are first-come, first-served. More info here.

Carolyn Forché, Ocean Vuong, and Marilyn Chin at the 21st Annual Bourne Poetry Reading
2022-11-10 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | MI
Join Ocean Vuong, Carolyn Forche, and Marilyn Chin for an evening of poetry from Georgia Tech at 7 PM ET on November 10th.
From the Organizers:
The reading is FREE and open to the public, and will take place virtually via Zoom. Livestream links and other information are on tabs below.
For more information, contact Travis Denton via email at travis.denton@lmc.gatech.edu .

John Freeman Reading with Samiya Bashir at Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House, NYU
2022-11-10 19:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | Lilliann Vernon Creative Writers House, 58 West 10th St., New York,, NY, 10011
John Freeman will read with Samiya Bashir at 7 PM EST on Thursday, November 10th.
From the organizers:
Poetry Reading: Samiya Bashir and John Freeman
Readings by Samiya Bashir and John Freeman, with a reception and book signing to follow. Please see below for more information about the authors.
Open to the public
All attendees are required to RSVP in advance; please click here
***
COVID-19 Protocols (please read carefully)
Per current NYU guidelines, masks are optional. All NYU attendees will be required to show an NYU Violet Go pass at the door. Members of the public are required to adhere to the following:
Age: Must be 5 years of age or older.
Identification: Must show a valid government-issued photo ID (children under 18 can provide non-government identification).
Vaccination: Must provide proof of being fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and boosted (if eligible, based on CDC criteria) with an FDA-authorized or WHO-listed vaccine. Documentation must include:

Name
Birthdate
Dates of doses
Vaccine manufacturer
Documentation must be in English

Note: If the documentation proof you provide does not meet these requirements, you will not be admitted.
Health and Safety Protocols: All attendees must comply with all COVID-19 health and safety protocols, University policies, codes of conduct, and building-specific protocols.
***
The Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House is wheelchair accessible with at least two weeks advance notice; for this or any other accommodations, please call the Creative Writing Program at 212.998.8816 or email creative.writing@nyu.edu.

Samiya Bashir is a poet, writer, librettist, performer, and multi-media poetry maker whose work, both solo and collaborative, has been widely published, performed, installed, printed, screened, experienced, and Oxford comma’d from Berlin to Düsseldorf, Amsterdam to Accra, Florence to Rome and across the United States. Bashir is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Field Theories, winner of the 2018 Oregon Book Award’s Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry. Her honors include the Rome Prize in Literature, the Pushcart Prize, Oregon’s Arts & Culture Council Individual Artist Fellowship in Literature, and two Michigan’s Hopwood Poetry Awards among numerous other awards, grants, fellowships, and residencies. In addition to her books, Bashir has served as editor to national magazines and anthologies of literature and artwork. In 2002 she was co-founder of Fire & Ink, an advocacy organization and writer’s festival for LGBT writers of African descent with whom she worked through 2015. An Associate Professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, Bashir works to create, employ, and teach—within and without traditional academic setting—a restorative poetics which can acknowledge the despair often bred by isolation and turn it toward a poetics of light and its potential for witness, for healing, and for change. Bashir lives in Harlem.
John Freeman founded the literary annual Freeman’s, the latest theme of which is animals. He’s also an executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf. The author and editor of eleven books, he lives in New York City and hosts the California Book Club, a monthly discussion of a great work of literature from the Golden State for Alta magazine. His new book is Wind, Trees, a collection of poems. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages.

John Freeman and Deborah Landau
2022-11-14 19:30 - 20:30 (America/New_York) | Greenlight Bookstore, 632 Flatbush Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 11225
Copper Canyon Press authors John Freeman and Deborah Landau will present from their new books at Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn at 7:30 PM ET on Monday, Novemeber 14th.
From the organizers: John Freeman—poet, editor, and founder of the literary annual Freeman’s—joins us along with prizewinning poet Deborah Landau for an evening of all things Copper Canyon Press. Freeman presents his newest book Wind, Trees: a meditation on power and loss, change and adaptation, offering a stark moral critique of pandemic self-preservation—as “justifications grew / with greed like vines / up the side of a tree / taking everything.” Landau will preview her next collection, Skeletons, forthcoming from Copper Canyon in 2023. Join us for an evening contemplating the liberties and limitations of the poetic line from two of its contemporary masters.
Registerfor this inperson event here.

John Freeman, Victoria Chang, Peter Balakian, and Victoria Redel on “Redemption, Refuge, and Release”
2022-11-19 12:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | Miami Dade College, Room 6100 (Building 6, 1st Floor) 300 NE Second Ave., Miami, FL, 33132
Join John Freeman, Victoria Chang, Peter Balakian, and Jennifer Redel for a panel discussion of “Redemption, Refuge, and Release,” at the Miami Book Fair on Saturday November 19th at 12 PM ET.
From the Organizers:
Whether meditating on the sensuality of fruits and vegetables, the COVID-19 pandemic, the trauma and memory of the Armenian genocide, James Baldwin in France, or Arshile Gorky in New York City, Peter Balakian‘s layered, elliptical language, wired phrases, and shifting tempos in No Sign engage both life’s harshness and beauty and define his inventive and distinctive style. In The Trees Witness Everything, Victoria Chang turns to compact Japanese syllabic forms called “wakas,” powerfully innovating on tradition while continuing her pursuit of one of life’s hardest questions: how to let go. What can the trees teach us about inhabiting space together? John Freeman studies the devastating failings of humanity and the redemptive possibilities of love in Wind, Trees. And drawing from a long family history of flight and refuge to rewrite Eden, the poems in Victoria Redel‘s Paradise interweave religion and myth, personal lore and nation-building, borders actual and imagined, asking: What if what we fell from was never, actually, grace?

An EVening of Poetry with Leila Chatti (Deluge) and Mónica Gomery (Might Kindred)
2022-11-22 20:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | MI
A Virtual Reading with Leila Chatti and Mónica Gomery will read with Brookline Brooksmith, an independent bookstore in New England. The event will be held on Zoom and the authors’ books will be available for purchase.
Leila Chatti, a Tunisian-American dual citizen, has lived in the United States, Tunisia, and Southern France. She is the author of the debut full-length collection Deluge (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), winner of the 2021 Levis Reading Prize, the 2021 Luschei Prize for African Poetry, and longlisted for the 2021 PEN Open Book Award, and the chapbooks Ebb (New-Generation African Poets) and Tunsiya/Amrikiya, the 2017 Editors’ Selection from Bull City Press. She is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico. Her poems have received prizes from Ploughshares’ Emerging Writer’s Contest, Narrative’s 30 Below Contest, the Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Prize, and the Pushcart Prize, among others, and appear in The New York Times Magazine, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, POETRY, The Nation, The Atlantic, Ploughshares, Tin House, American Poetry Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Georgia Review, New England Review, Kenyon Review Online, Narrative, The Rumpus, Best New Poets (2015 & 2017), and other journals and anthologies. She is currently the Grace Hazard Conkling Writer-in-Residence at Smith College.
Mónica Gomery is the author of Might Kindred, winner of the 2021 Prairie Schooner Raz-Shumaker Book Prize, judged by Kwame Dawes, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and Hilda Raz. A Venezuelan-American Jewish poet, her work engages with queerness, loss, diaspora, theology, and cultivating courageous hearts. She has been a nominee for Pushcart Prizes and Best of the Net, and is the winner of Pallette Poetry’s 2022 Sappho Prize for Women Poets. She is a graduate of the Tin House Winter Workshop. Her poems appear most recently in the Iowa Review, Adroit Journal, Black Warrior Review, and Poet Lore. She is also the author of Here is the Night and the Night on the Road (Cooper Dillon Books, 2018) and Of Darkness and Tumbling (YesYes Books, 2017). Read more at www.monicagomerywriting.com
About Brookline Booksmith
We are one of New England’s premier independent bookstores, family-owned and locally run since 1961. We offer an extensive selection of new, used, and bargain books; unique, beautiful gifts; award-winning events series; and specialty foods. Every day, we strive to foster community through the written word, represent a diverse range of voices and histories, and inspire conversations that enrich our lives. Find more at brooklinebooksmith.com!
EVENT ACCESSIBILITY
Barring technical difficulty, auto-transcription is enabled on all Brookline Booksmith Zoom Webinar events.

Brian Teare's The Empty Form Goes All the Way To Heaven with Victoria Chang
2022-11-30 19:00 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | MI
Victoria Chang will discuss The Empty Form Goes All the Way to Heaven (Nightboat Books) with poet Brian Teare for a book launch on Zoom. In the book, Teare engages with the work and writings of American painter Agnes Martin.

From the organizers:
We hope you will join us on Zoom on 11/30 at 7pm ET/4pm PT for the book launch of The Empty Form Goes All the Way to Heaven by Brian Teare, joined by Victoria Chang! RSVP here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0kfu-urDMqHND8xQcJNpJTRl1rVKQ4Ieml

Natalie Shapero Reading at Heavy Manners Library
2022-12-07 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Heavy Manners Library, 1200 North Alvarado Street,, Los Angeles,, CA, 90026
Join Heavy Manners Library for a night of poetry and music featuring poets Natalie Shapero and Meg Shevenock, and musician Calvin Lee Reeder. The event will be held on Wednesday, December 7th, 2022 at 7pm PST at Heavy Manners Library in Los Angeles.
From the organizers:
Natalie Shapero is the author, most recently, of the poetry collection POPULAR LONGING. Her previous collections are HARD CHILD, shortlisted for the International Griffin Poetry Prize, and NO OBJECT, winner of the Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award. Natalie’s writing has appeared in The Nation, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, The New York Times Magazine, and elsewhere. She teaches at UC Irvine.
Meg Shevenock’s debut poetry collection, The Miraculous, Sometimes, won the 2019 Marystina Santiestevan first book prize, judged by Bob Hicok for Conduit Books & Ephemera. Meg’s poems and essays have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, Lana Turner, Best New Poets, Denver Quarterly, Smartish Pace, Tupelo Quarterly, and the Kenyon Review blog. She is a 2021 recipient of a writer’s grant from The American Academy of Arts and Letters and 2020 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award winner in Poetry. Meg is frequently “the reader” and researcher for visual artist Ann Hamilton. She teaches writing to gifted youth.
Calvin Lee Reeder is a filmmaker and musician originally from Seattle but has been marooned in Los Angeles for over a decade. His films have won awards at Sundance, AFI, and The Sarasota Film Festival. His music has done nothing like that. However, he did waste a good part of his youth touring extensively with art punk bands The Intelligence (In the Red Records) and Popular Shapes (On/On switch). As a solo act, he plays off-kilter folk songs that usually start in A minor- heck, they usually end there, too.

For more work by the performers, visit…
Meg Shevenock
https://www.megshevenock.com/book

Natalie Shapero
https://natalieshapero.com/

John Freeman and Ha Jin at Harvard Bookstore
2022-12-13 19:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA, 02138
John Freeman and Ha Jin will read at Harvard Bookstore on Tuesday December 13th at 7 PM ET.
From the organizers:
Harvard Book Store welcomes JOHN FREEMAN—author and executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf—and award-winning author HA JIN for an evening of poetry and eggnog, featuring readings from Wind, Trees and The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai (Li Po).
Harvard Book Store is excited to be back to in-person programming. To ensure the safety and comfort of everyone in attendance, the following Covid-19 safety protocols will be in place at all of our Harvard Book Store events until further notice:

Face coverings are required of all staff and attendees when inside the store. Masks must snugly cover nose and mouth.

About Wind, Trees
In Wind, Trees, John Freeman presents a meditation on power and loss, change and adaptation. What can the trees teach us about inhabiting space together? What might we gain if we admit we do not control the wind, and cannot possibly carry all we’ve been handed? Offering a stark moral critique of pandemic self-preservation—as “justifications grew / with greed like vines / up the side of a tree / taking everything”—Wind, Trees joins the ranks of politically urgent yet timeless collections like The Lice by W.S. Merwin. Through narrative lyric and metaphysical pulse, meandering thought and punctuating quiet, Freeman studies the devastating failings of humanity and the redemptive possibilities of love.
About The Banished Immortal
In his own time (701–762), Li Bai’s poems—shaped by Daoist thought and characterized by their passion, romance, and lust for life—were never given their proper due by the official literary gatekeepers. Nonetheless, his lines rang out on the lips of court entertainers, tavern singers, soldiers, and writers throughout the Tang dynasty, and his deep desire for a higher, more perfect world gave rise to his nickname, the Banished Immortal. Today, Bai’s verses are still taught to China’s schoolchildren and recited at parties and toasts; they remain an inextricable part of the Chinese language.
With the instincts of a master novelist, Ha Jin draws on a wide range of historical and literary sources to weave the great poet’s life story. He follows Bai from his origins on the western frontier to his ramblings travels as a young man, which were filled with filled with striving but also with merry abandon, as he raised cups of wine with friends and fellow poets. Ha Jin also takes us through the poet’s later years—in which he became swept up in a military rebellion that altered the course of China’s history—and the mysterious circumstances of his death, which are surrounded by legend.
The Banished Immortal is an extraordinary portrait of a poet who both transcended his time and was shaped by it, and whose ability to live, love, and mourn without reservation produced some of the most enduring verses.

Comet of Stillness: Taught By Victoria Chang and Matthew Zapruder
2023-01-22 16:00 - 2023-02-19 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | MI
Victoria Chang and Matthew Zapruder will be teaching a class called Comet of Stillness: A five-week short course on the Poetry of W.S. Merwin. The course will meet on Sundays from January 22 – February 19, 2023.
Early Bird Tuition (before January 12, 2023): $270.
Standard Tuition (After January 12, 2023): $300.
Financial Aid is available
From the organizers:
W.S. Merwin’s poetry was visionary, ecological, anti-war, and humanist, and exhibits a clarity and strangeness that continues to exert a profound influence on contemporary American poetry. The goal of these five sessions is to dive deeply into this extraordinary poet and his body of work. Across five sessions, poets Victoria Chang and Matthew Zapruder will facilitate close-readings of key poems, and will situate the poems, and the poet, in their historical contexts. The course will explore Merwin’s formal innovations, his thematic concerns, and his development as a poet from his earliest work to his final poems. Chang and Zapruder will introduce, and talk with, key figures from his literary life, including Merwin’s long-time editor at Copper Canyon Press, Michael Wiegers.

In addition to course meetings, Chang and Zapruder will provide additional reading materials. Each session will begin with an hour of discussion, including background and close readings, followed by a ten-minute break. The session will then reconvene for a second hour in which Chang and Zapruder will discuss thoughts from the chat, answer questions, and offer further insights. Each session will end with an optional poetry writing prompt based on Merwin’s poetry.

Dates/Times: Sundays, January 22 – February 19, 2023 4:00-6:00 PM (Pacific) on Zoom

Early Bird Tuition (before January 12, 2023): $270.
Standard Tuition (After January 12, 2023): $300.
Financial aid is available. Please contact us if needed.

What to Expect:
Five, two-hour weekly sessions online with assigned reading of poems and supplemental material.
In the first sixty or seventy minutes of each session, Victoria Chang and Mathew Zapruder will explore and supply background on the previously assigned poems.
In the second hour, we will reconvene in our large group for conversation and questions.
Participant questions and comments may be addressed using Vimeo’s chat feature during the second hour, though questions can be posted in the chat throughout the session.
Optional small (8-10 person) discussion groups will be available to those with the energy and interest after the formal session is over.
Optional writing prompts based on Merwin’s poems will be provided.
Each participant will be given a seat on a dedicated SLACK channel, where writing prompt responses and extracurricular discussion can occur.
This course will be presented live online on the Vimeo platform.
These sessions will be recorded, and will be available for later viewing by registered participants for 30 days following the final session.
TEXT:
For this course, our text will be The Essential W.S. Merwin; handouts for each session will be posted online.
Participants who don’t own the text are asked to purchase and explore it, if possible, before January 22.
The Essential W.S. Merwin (Copper Canyon Press)
THE SHORT COURSE PLAN:
Session 1 (Jan. 22): Introduction and early forms
Session 2 (Jan. 29): The Lice: war and the environment
Session 3 (Feb 5): Middle Period: intellect, resistance, and formal innovation
Session 4 (Feb. 12): The Vixen: time and ghosts
Session 5 (Feb 19): Late poems and Merwin’s poetic legacy
Online, and year-round, The Writers’ Annex is composed of short courses, seminars, workshops, and more. Our vision is to bring the creative insight and experience of our staff poets and prose writers to our community in all seasons, not just in the summertime, and not just here in our Valley. Our online offerings will address such topics as eco-poetics, translation, and generative sessions. Some will be one or two days, some will be weekend intensives, and some will meet weekly for a month or two. In addition, we hope these offerings will help offset the tremendous expenses we incur each summer bringing excellent writers of poetry and prose to the Valley regardless of their ability to pay.

Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry with Naomi Shihab Nye, Steve Spencer, and Joseph Bednarik
2023-01-31 17:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | MI
Online event celebrating the 20th anniversary of Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry by Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison

Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_fAKJbjneRvuW9WjB6-UrSQ

The Paris Review and the Morgan Library & Museum Present: A Reading and Conversation with Victoria Chang, C. S. Giscombe, Timmy Straw, and Srikanth Reddy
2023-02-08 19:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | The Morgan’s Gilder Lehrman Hall, 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY, 10016, United States
From the organizers:
“Since 1953, The Paris Review has shaped the canon of contemporary poetry, publishing exciting new voices alongside household names. Contributors Victoria Chang, C. S. Giscombe, and Timmy Straw will be joined at the Morgan Library & Museum by the Review’s new poetry editor, Srikanth Reddy, to discuss their poems in the magazine’s new Winter issue, no. 242, as well as some of their favorite poems in the Review’s seventy-year-old archive—the first fifty years of which are housed at the Morgan.
By entering the museum, you agree to our updated Visitor Guidelines and Policies. Masks are required for attending all public programs.”
Register here: https://www.themorgan.org/programs/new-poetry-and-paris-review-victoria-chang-cs-giscombe-timmy-straw-and-srikanth-reddy
General admission tickets cost $20. Morgan members and subscribers to The Paris Review pay $15. Students with a valid school ID get in FREE.

Zell Visiting Writers Series: Poet Alberto Ríos Reading and Q&A
2023-02-16 17:30 - 18:30 (America/New_York) | Helmut Stern Auditorium, 25 S. State St., Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, United States
From the organizers:
“The Zell Visiting Writers Series presents Alberto Ríos, Arizona’s inaugural poet laureate and a recent chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, is the author of twelve books and chapbooks of poetry, including The Theater of Night—winner of the 2007 PEN/Beyond Margins Award—three collections of short stories, and a memoir about growing up on the border, Capirotada.
All events will be held in a hybrid format (i.e., both in person and over Zoom). Zoom attendees may login to all Zell Visiting Writers Series events via the usual link (with no pre-registration needed): https://tinyurl.com/ZellWriters All events will include live, automatic captioning for Zoom attendees.
ZVWS events are free and open to the public. For additional information, questions, or accommodations needs, please contact Program Coordinator Michaela Kotziers at kotziers@umich.edu.”

Harry Ransom Center presents Victoria Chang: Author Reading and Book Signing
2023-02-16 18:00 (America/Chicago) | Harry Ransom Center, 300 West 21st Street, Austin, TX, 78712, United States
Harry Ransom Center presents Victoria Chang: Author Reading and Book Signing, 6 PM CST
From the organizers:
Poet, writer, and editor Victoria Chang celebrates her most recent book of poetry, The Trees Witness Everything, published by Copper Canyon Press and Corsair Books in the U.K. in 2022, with this reading and a book signing at the Ransom Center. The book was named one of the Best Books of 2022 by The New Yorker and The Guardian. In the book, Chang reinvigorates language by way of concentration, using constraint to illuminate and free the wild interior. Largely composed in various Japanese syllabic forms called “wakas,” each poem is shaped by pattern and count.
This highly original work innovates inside the lineage of great poets including W.S. Merwin, whose poem titles are repurposed as frames and mirrors for the text, stitching past and present in complex dialogue. Chang depicts the smooth, melancholic isolation of the mind while reaching outward to name—with reverence, economy, and whimsy—the ache of wanting, the hawk and its shadow, our human urge to hide the minute beneath the light.
More information will appear here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/victoria-chang-author-reading-and-book-signing-tickets-510908449927?fbclid=IwAR30oDL9yim6y6qFQ7IGanjVQq_4wPGQ7QztFazKljf7FBA2V66QYf4aIRY

New Dominion Bookshop presents a Reading with Fernando Valverde and Wajahat Ali
2023-02-18 16:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | New Dominion Bookshop, 404 East Main St, Charlottesville, VA, 22902, United States
From the organizers:
“Join us for a reading with poet Fernando Valverde (America) and writer Wajahat Ali (Go Back to Where You Came From). This in-person event will be free and open to the public. We recommend arriving early for the best seating.”

Michael Wiegers Hosts Reading and Q&A with Shangyang Fang
2023-02-18 18:30 - 19:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | The Royal Block, 222 Main Street, Waitsburg, WA, 99361, United States
On February 18th at 6:30pm, Michael Wiegers, Executive Editor of Copper Canyon Press, will host a reading and Q&A with Shangyang Fang at The Royal Block Hotel. Fang will read from his collection “Burying the Mountain.”
This event is FREE and open to the public.

John Freeman Reading & Conversation with Su Hwang & Michael Kleber-Diggs
2023-03-06 07:00 - 20:00 (America/Chicago) | Moon Palace Books, 3032 Minnehaha Ave., Minneapolis, MN, 55406, United States
From the Organizers:
“Please join us on Monday, March 6th at 7:00pm for a free, in-person, masked event at Moon Palace Books to welcome poet, essayist, editor, and literary critic John Freeman, who will be reading from his recent third poetry collection, WIND, TREES, published with Copper Canyon Press in October 2022.
He will be joined by Twin Cities-based poets Su Hwang and Michael Kleber-Diggs for a reading and conversation about poetry and literary activism. There will also be time for audience Q&A with John Freeman.
Formerly the Executive Editor of Literary Hub, John Freeman co-edited with former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith the anthology THERE’S A REVOLUTION OUTSIDE, MY LOVE, which included essays by Su Hwang and Michael Kleber-Diggs, following the murder of George Floyd.”
**This is an in-person event. Masks are required in store. Social Distancing is encouraged.**

Reading with John Freeman and Stuart Dybek at Volumes Bookstore
2023-03-07 18:30 - 20:30 (America/Chicago) | Volumes Bookstore, 900 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL, 60611, United States
From the organizers:
“Join us at Volumes Bookstore on March 7th as we welcome back poet, critic, and writer John Freeman to read from his new collection of poems from Copper Canyon Press, Wind, Trees. John will be joined in conversation with one of Chicago’s most beloved writers/poets/educators, Stuart Dybek.”

Victoria Chang at Pacific Lutheran University Visiting Writers Series
2023-03-07 19:00 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Scandinavian Cultural Center, AUC, Anderson University Center, Room #100, Tacoma, WA, 98447, United States
Pacific Lutheran University’s 2022-23 Visiting Writers Series will host poet Victoria Chang at the Scandinavian Cultural Center, Room #100. This live reading is open to the campus community for in-person attendance.

Orion Magazine Presents: A Reading with John Freeman
2023-03-08 19:00 - 20:00 (America/Chicago) | Nature Center at Shaker Lakes, 2600 South Park Blvd., Cleveland, OH, 44120, United States
From the organizers:
“Orion Magazine contributing writer, John Freeman, author, poet, executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf, and founder of the literary journal Freeman’s will be making a stop in Cleveland on his tour of independent books stores.
Join us at the Nature Center at Shaker Lakes on Wednesday, March 8th at 7 pm for a refreshing and invigorating conversation between John Freeman and Literary Cleveland’s executive director, Matt Weinkam. Books will be available at the event courtesy of Mac’s Backs-Books on Coventry or stop by the store to pick up a copy of Freeman’s poetry collection, Wind, Trees (Copper Canyon 2022), Tales of Two Planets, a collection of essays focusing on inequality and the climate crisis, and the recent Freeman’s anthology, Animals. Mac’s Backs will be donating a portion of profits to the Nature Center. This event is sponsored by Orion Magazine in partnership with the Nature Center. This is a free public program and donations to the Nature Center are welcome. Registration is required.”
Register here: https://shakerlakes.doubleknot.com/event/john-freeman-in-conversation-with-matt-weinkam/2964999
