Please join us for a special collaboration poetry reading with SWWIM x Matwaala featuring Nina Sudhakar + Carolene Kurien!

In honor of our 10th anniversary, we are delighted to announce a partnership with Matwaala, which is also celebrating a decade of supporting writers! 

Matwaala was launched in 2015 to increase the visibility of diasporic South Asian poets (from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Afghanistan) in the mainstream American literary landscape. The name Matwaala in a transferred sense suggests the intoxication of poetic creativity. Matwaala showcases the diversity within the South Asian community—and within the Indo-American community.

Visiting writer: Nina Sudhakar is a writer, poet, and lawyer based in Chicago. She is the author of Where to Carry the Sound (winner of the 2024 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction and a 2024. Foreword INDIES Award) and two poetry chapbooks, Matriarchetypes and Embodiments. She serves as Dispatches Editor & Book Reviews Editor for The Common and as a Board Member of the Chicago Poetry Center. For more, please see www.ninasudhakar.com.

Local writer: Carolene Kurien is a Malayali-American poet from South Florida. Her work has garnered support and recognition from MacDowell, The Miami Book Fair Emerging Writer Fellowship, Poetry Society UK, and the Sewanee Writer's Conference. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Poetry London, RHINO, Sixth Finch,The Cincinnati Review, Southeast Review, and elsewhere. She currently serves as the Poetry Editor of Okay Donkey. You can learn more at carolenekurien.com.

Join us for a poetry reading and conversation with Chloe Martinez & Ximena Gómez.

Chloe Martinez is a poet, a translator, and a scholar of South Asian religions. She is the author of the collection Ten Thousand Selves (The Word Works) and the chapbook Corner Shrine (Backbone Press). Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, POETRY, Prairie Schooner, Agni and elsewhere. She works at Claremont McKenna College. See more at www.chloeAVmartinez.com.

Ximena Gómez is a Colombian poet and translator, the author of Habitación con moscas and Cuando llegue la sequía (both by Ediciones Torremozas, Madrid), the bilingual poetry collection Último día / Last Day, as well as a joint collection with George Franklin, Conversaciones sobre agua / Conversations About Water (both by Katakana Editores). Her work has appeared in World Literature Today, Cagibi, Interim, Lunch Ticket, Círculo de Poesía, Nueva York Poetry Review, El Golem, and Hypermedia, among several others, and she has been included in various anthologies.  She is the Spanish translator of Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson and Una para los Murphys by Lynda Mullaly Hunt (both by Penguin Random House) and George Franklin's poetry collection, Among the Ruins / Entre las ruinas, (Katakana Editores). She was a contributing translator of 32 Poems/32 Poemas by Hyam Plutzik (Suburbano Ediciones). In 2018 she was a finalist for the Best of the Net; in 2024 she was a finalist for the Gabo prize in translation, awarded by Lunch Ticket Magazine, and a finalist for the Paz Prize hosted by National Poetry Series.  She is currently a translation editor for Cagibi.

Join us for a reading and conversation with Hua Xi and Miami poets Carolina Hospital, Nicole Hospital-Medina, and Holly Iglesias.

Hua Xi (she/they) is a poet and artist. They are currently a Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford. Their poems have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, Poetry Daily and elsewhere.

Carolina Hospital’s poetry collections include Key West Nights and Other Aftershocks (Anhinga Press) and The Child of Exile: A Poetry Memoir (Arte Público Press), as well as Myth America and How to Get into Trouble (Anhinga Press), both collaborative collections with Maureen Seaton, Holly Iglesias, and Nicole Hospital-Medina; plus, the novel A Little Love, under the pen name C. C. Medina (Warner Books). She also collaborated with South Florida writers on the New York Times bestselling novel Naked Came the Manatee. Her work has appeared in publications such as the Norton Anthology of Latino Literature; Raising Lilly Ledbetter: Women Occupy the Workplace; and Rumors Secrets and Lies: Narrative Poems about Pregnancy, Abortion and Choice. Her new poetry collection All Roads Lead to Here is forthcoming in August 2025 (Redacted Books , ELJ Editions).

Cuban-American writer and educator, Nicole Hospital-Medina earned her MFA at the University of Miami where she now instructs writing. She is a poet-activist and a multi-faceted individual, serving as a voice for the neurodivergent community through her literary and artistic contributions. Her poems can be read in the anthologies, Poems from the Lockdown, Feminine Rising: Voices of Power and Invisibility, Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence, as well as in The Miami Herald, Paper Nautilus, Blunderbuss Magazine, The Acentos Review, and more. She is the inaugural winner of the Miami Herald O’Miami Haiku contest. Her paintings have been featured in Linden Lane Magazine. She released a collaborative chapbook, Myth America, working with poets, Carolina Hospital, Holly Iglesias and Maureen Seaton. The cover features one of her paintings, “In My Apartment. ” She continues to collaborate with this team, showcasing her work in their most recent collection from Anhinga Press, How to Get Into Trouble. Independently, she is celebrating the publication of the preliminary edition of her textbook, Rhetorical Innovation with AI Integration (Cognella Press).

Holly Iglesias’ work includes three books of poetry— Sleeping Things, Angles of Approach, and Souvenirs of a Shrunken World—a critical work, Boxing Inside the Box: Women’s Prose Poetry, and two collaborative chapbooks, Myth America and How to Get Into Trouble.  She has been awarded fellowships by the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Edward Albee Foundation, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She taught at the University of North Carolina-Asheville and at the University of Miami, where her favorite classes were History as an Act of the Imagination and Documentary Poetics. Her current project is Theories of Flight, an intergenerational memoir in prose fragments.

Join us for a poetry reading and conversation with Alafia Sessions & Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello.

Alafia Nicole Sessions is a black poet and mother living in Atlanta. She currently works as an educator, actress, herbalist and doula. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Southern Humanities Review, Indiana Review, Radar Poetry, Los Angeles Review, Obsidian, Gulf Coast Journal, Tahoma Literary Review and elsewhere. Alafia was selected by Evie Shockley as the winner of the 2023 Furious Flower Prize. She was a nominee for Best New Poets, a semi-finalist for the 92Y Discovery Prize and a finalist for the Sewanee Poetry Contest. Alafia is the recipient of the Sustainable Arts Foundation Award.

Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello is the author of Hour of the Ox (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016), winner of the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry. She co-translated Yi Won’s The World’s Lightest Motorcycle (Zephyr Press, 2021), which won the 2022 Translation Grand Prize from the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. Cancio-Bello has received fellowships from the NEA, Kundiman, Knight Foundation, and American Literary Translators Association, and her work has appeared in Kenyon Review Online, The New York Times, and more. She is co-founder of the Adoptee Literary Festival and PEN America Miami/South Florida Chapter, and a program manager for Miami Book Fair. www.MarciCalabretta.com

Join us for a poetry reading and conversation with Krysten Hill and Denise Duhamel, with special guest Julie Marie Wade.

Krysten Hill is the author of How Her Spirit Got Out (Aforementioned Productions, 2016), which received the 2017 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize. Her work has been featured in The Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day Series, Poetry Magazine, PANK, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Winter Tangerine Review, and elsewhere. She is recipient of the 2016 St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award, 2020 Mass Cultural Council Poetry Fellowship, and 2023 Vermont Studio Center Residency.

Denise Duhamel’s most recent books of poetry are Pink Lady (Pitt Poetry Series, 2025), Second Story (Pittsburgh, 2021) and Scald (2017). Blowout (2013) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In Which (2024) is a winner of the Rattle Chapbook Prize. She and the late Maureen Seaton co-authored five collections, the most recent of which was CAPRICE (Collaborations: Collected, Uncollected, and New) (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2015). Her nonfiction publications include The Unrhymables: Collaborations in Prose (with Julie Marie Wade, Noctuary Press, 2019). A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, she is a distinguished university professor in the MFA program at Florida International University in Miami.

A poetry reading reading and conversation with Nicole Cooley & Caroline Cabrera.

Nicole Cooley grew up in New Orleans and is the author of seven books of poems, most recently Of Marriage (Alice James Books 2018) and Girl after Girl after Girl (LSU Press 2017), as well as the forthcoming Mother Water Ash (LSU Press 2024).  She has also published two chapbooks and a novel. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, a fellowship from The American Antiquarian Society and the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets.  Her poems have appeared most recently in Poetry, DIODE, and Scoundrel Time. She is working on a new collection of poems titled Trash. She teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College, The City University of New York.

Caroline Cabrera is the author of the lyric essay collection, (lack begins as a tiny rumble) from Tinderbox Editions, as well as three poetry collections, Saint X (winner of the Hudson Prize from Black Lawrence Press), The Bicycle Year, and Flood Bloom, and two chapbooks, The Coma of the Comet (winner of the Burnside Review chapbook contest) and Dear Sensitive Beard (Dancing Girl Press). She serves as Artistic Director for O, Miami.

A poetry reading reading and conversation with Vandana Khanna and Nicole Callihan.

Born in New Delhi, India, Vandana Khanna is a writer, educator, and editor. She is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently, Burning Like Her Own Planet (Alice James Books, 2023). Her previous collections have won the Crab Orchard Review First Book Prize, The Miller Williams Poetry Prize, and the Diode Editions Chapbook Competition. Her poems have been published in The New Republic, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, New England Review, Guernica, and The Penguin Book of Indian Poetry.

Nicole Callihan’s most recent book, chigger ridge, was selected by Sandra Lim to receive The Tenth Gate Prize and was published by The Word Works in June 2024. Other books include This Strange Garment (Terrapin 2023) and the 2019 novella, The Couples. Her work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Tin House, Conduit, The American Poetry Review, and as a Poem-a-Day selection from the Academy of American Poets. Winner of an Alma Award, her next book, SLIP, will be published by Saturnalia in 2025.

A poetry reading and conversation with K.T. Landon and Deborah DeNicola.

K. T. Landon is the author of the chapbook Orange, Dreaming (Five Oaks Press, 2017) and received her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her poems have appeared in The Sun, The Southern Review, New Ohio Review, Nimrod, SWWIM, North American Review, Narrative, and Best New Poets.  She is a reader for Lily Poetry Review.

Deborah DeNicola’s most recent book, The Impossible 2021 is from Kelsay Press. She compiled and edited the anthology Orpheus & Company; Contemporary Poems on Greek Mythology, from The University Press of New England. Previous poetry books include Original Human, from Word Tech Communications, Where Divinity Begins from Alice James Books, and several chapbooks, two contest winners. Her memoir, The Future that Brought Her Here was published by Nicholas-Hays/Ibis Press in 2009.  She won The Packingtown Review’s Analytical Essay Award in 2008 and the Carol Bly Short Story Award in 2013. Among other awards Deborah has received a National Endowment Fellowship in poetry. She taught as an adjunct professor in Boston and Florida for over 20 years. Today she works as a freelance editor off her web site: intuitivegateways.com and as a certified tutor for Broward College.

A reading and conversation with award-winning poets Alexandra Lytton Regalado and Jordan Pérez. Following their reading, the poets will pose questions to one other, as well as field questions from moderator Laura Villareal, who will identify resonances and unifying themes across their work. There will also be a Q & A with the audience. RSVP below. This event will take place in the Betsy Hotel Gallery.

In special collaboration with Letras Latinas. Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the Institute for Latino Studies (ILS), strives to enhance the visibility, appreciation and study of Latinx literature both on and off the campus of the University of Notre Dame. We put an emphasis on programs that support newer voices, foster a sense of community among writers, and place Latinx writers in community spaces. They will be celebrating its 20th anniversary throughout calendar year 2024.

Jordan Pérez is a Cuban-American poet whose first book, Santa Tarantula, won the 10th annual Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in POETRY, Cutthroat, Poetry International, Mississippi Review, and elsewhere. She works professionally in childhood sexual abuse prevention. Learn more at jordanperezpoetry.com.

Alexandra Lytton Regalado is a Salvadoran-American author, editor, and translator. Her works include Relinquenda, winner of the National Poetry Series (Beacon Press, 2022), and Matria (Black Lawrence Press, 2017). She is the co-founding editor of Kalina press and assistant editor at swwim.org. More info at www.alexandralyttonregalado.com

Join Tyler Mills and Jennifer Litt for a poetry reading at The Betsy-South Beach Library. April 10th, starting at 7:30 PM EST.

Tyler Mills (she/her) is the author of City Scattered (Snowbound Chapbook Award, Tupelo Press 2022), Hawk Parable (Akron Poetry Prize, University of Akron Press 2019), Tongue Lyre (Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award, Southern Illinois University Press 2013), and co-author with Kendra DeColo of Low Budget Movie (Diode Editions Chapbook Prize, Diode Editions 2021). Her nonfiction manuscript, The Bomb Cloud, received a Literature Grant from the Café Royal Foundation NYC. A poet and essayist, her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, The New Republic, The Believer, and Poetry, and her essays in AGNI, Brevity, Copper Nickel, River Teeth, and The Rumpus. She teaches for Sarah Lawrence College’s Writing Institute and lives in Brooklyn.

After graduating from the University of Rhode Island with a BA in English, Jennifer Litt moved to London, England, to work as an au pair and to absorb the culture. She earned a Diploma of Chelsea College (MA equivalent) in Modern Social and Cultural Studies and, after returning to the States, she worked as a secondary English teacher and language arts coordinator in Miami and as an adult literacy instructor and an adjunct writing professor in Rochester, New York. Jennifer relocated to Fort Lauderdale in 2018 and works part-time as a freelance editor. She is the author of the chapbook, Maximum Speed Through Zero (Blue Lyra Press, 2016) and the poetry collection, Strictly from Hunger (Accents Publishing, 2022). Jennifer’s work has appeared in several publications, including ellipsis…literature & art, Blue Earth Review, Gulf Stream, Jet Fuel Review, Lumina, Naugatuck River Review, nycBigCityLit, South Florida Poetry Journal, Stone Canoe, SWWIM Every Day, and Witchery.

Meet the artist Tyler Mills at The Betsy-South Beach Library on April 10th starting at 6:00 PM EST.

Tyler Mills (she/her) is the author of City Scattered (Snowbound Chapbook Award, Tupelo Press 2022), Hawk Parable (Akron Poetry Prize, University of Akron Press 2019), Tongue Lyre (Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award, Southern Illinois University Press 2013), and co-author with Kendra DeColo of Low Budget Movie (Diode Editions Chapbook Prize, Diode Editions 2021). Her nonfiction manuscript, The Bomb Cloud, received a Literature Grant from the Café Royal Foundation NYC. A poet and essayist, her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, The New Republic, The Believer, and Poetry, and her essays in AGNI, Brevity, Copper Nickel, River Teeth, and The Rumpus. She teaches for Sarah Lawrence College’s Writing Institute and lives in Brooklyn.

Join Keetje Kuipers and Julie Marie Wade for a poetry reading at The Betsy-South Beach Library. March 6th, starting at 7:30 PM EST.

Keetje Kuipers is the author of three books of poems, all from BOA Editions: Beautiful in the Mouth (2010), which was chosen by Thomas Lux as the winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, The Keys to the Jail (2014), and All Its Charms (2019), which includes poems honored by publication in both The Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies. Keetje’s poetry and prose have appeared in Narrative, Virginia Quarterly Review, The New York Times Magazine, American Poetry Review, Orion, The Believer, and over a hundred other magazines. Keetje has been a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, the Katharine Bakeless Nason Fellow in Poetry at Bread Loaf, the Emerging Writer Lecturer at Gettysburg College, and the recipient of multiple residency fellowships, including PEN Northwest’s Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency. Keetje is Editor of Poetry Northwest and a board member at the National Book Critics Circle. She lives in Missoula, Montana, with her wife, their two children, and a backyard full of bears.

Julie Marie Wade is a member of the creative writing faculty at Florida International University in Miami. A winner of the Marie Alexander Poetry Series and the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir, her collections of poetry and prose include Wishbone: A Memoir in Fractures, Small Fires: Essays, Postage Due: Poems & Prose Poems, When I Was Straight, Same-Sexy Marriage: A Novella in Poems, Just an Ordinary Woman Breathing, and Skirted. Her collaborative titles include The Unrhymables: Collaborations in Prose, written with Denise Duhamel, and Telephone: Essays in Two Voices, written with Brenda Miller. Wade makes her home in Dania Beach with her spouse Angie Griffin and their two cats. Her newest projects are Fugue: An Aural History (New Michigan Press, 2023), and Otherwise: Essays (Autumn House, 2023), selected by Lia Purpura for the 2022 Autumn House Press Nonfiction Book Prize. Forthcoming in 2024 is The Mary Years: A Memoir, selected by Michael Martone as the winner of the 2023 Clay Renolds Novella Prize.

Meet the artist Keetje Kuipers at The Betsy-South Beach Library on March 6th starting at 6:00 PM EST.

Keetje Kuipers is the author of three books of poems, all from BOA Editions: Beautiful in the Mouth (2010), which was chosen by Thomas Lux as the winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, The Keys to the Jail (2014), and All Its Charms (2019), which includes poems honored by publication in both The Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies. Keetje’s poetry and prose have appeared in Narrative, Virginia Quarterly Review, The New York Times Magazine, American Poetry Review, Orion, The Believer, and over a hundred other magazines. Keetje has been a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, the Katharine Bakeless Nason Fellow in Poetry at Bread Loaf, the Emerging Writer Lecturer at Gettysburg College, and the recipient of multiple residency fellowships, including PEN Northwest’s Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency. Keetje is Editor of Poetry Northwest and a board member at the National Book Critics Circle. She lives in Missoula, Montana, with her wife, their two children, and a backyard full of bears.

Join Farnaz Fatemi and Fabienne Josaphat for a poetry reading at The Betsy-South Beach Library. February 7th, starting at 7:30 PM EST.

Farnaz Fatemi, an Iranian American poet and writer, is a founding member of The Hive Poetry Collective and was formerly a writing instructor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her book, Sister Tongue زبان خواهر, was published in September 2022. It won the 2021 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, selected by Tracy K. Smith, and received a Starred Review from Publisher’s Weekly.  Some of her poems and lyric essays appear in Poem-a-Day (Poets.org), Tab Journal, Pedestal Review, Nowruz Journal, Grist Journal and Tupelo Quarterly and the anthologies Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and its Diaspora and Halal If You Hear Me.  More at farnazfatemi.com

Fabienne Josaphat is the 2023 PEN Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, and the author of the forthcoming novel Kingdom of No Tomorrow (Algonquin). Her first novel, Dancing in the Baron’s Shadow, was published by Unnamed Press. Her publications include poems in Kitchen Table Quarterly, Grist Journal, Hinchas de Poesia, and Eight Miami Poets, essays in The Washington Post and Teen Vogue. She is currently at work on a third novel.

Meet the artist Farnaz Fatemi at The Betsy-South Beach Library on February 7th starting at 6:00 PM EST.

Farnaz Fatemi, an Iranian American poet and writer, is a founding member of The Hive Poetry Collective and was formerly a writing instructor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her book, Sister Tongue زبان خواهر, was published in September 2022. It won the 2021 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, selected by Tracy K. Smith, and received a Starred Review from Publisher’s Weekly.  Some of her poems and lyric essays appear in Poem-a-Day (Poets.org), Tab Journal, Pedestal Review, Nowruz Journal, Grist Journal and Tupelo Quarterly and the anthologies Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and its Diaspora and Halal If You Hear Me.  More at farnazfatemi.com

Join Kristen Renee Miller and Arsimmer McCoy for a poetry reading at The Betsy-South Beach Library. December 19th, starting at 7:30 PM EST.

Kristen Renee Miller is the incoming director and editor-in-chief for Sarabande Books. A poet and translator, she is the 2020 winner of the Gulf Coast Prize in Translation and the translator of two books of poetry from the French by Ilnu Nation poet Marie-Andrée Gill. Her work can be found widely, including in POETRY, The Kenyon Review, DIAGRAM, jubilat, and Best New Poets. She is the recipient of fellowships and awards from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, AIGA, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the American Literary Translators Association. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky.

Arsimmer McCoy is an interdisciplinary artist who merges poetry, archive, performance, and audio/visual sculpture, into a conduit for advocacy. She’s been published in Venice Magazine, RootWork journal, and books 2 and 3 of The Miami Trilogy published by O,Miami. Film writing credits include the art films “HOW TO: Oh, Look at me”, dir by visual artist and sculptor GeoVanna Gonzalez & “You Can Always Come Home”, dir by Emmy award-winner  Juancy Matos. In May, Arsimmer completed and debuted her poetry-driven stage play “I’m so Depressed” for Miami light projects Here and Now artists group show. McCoy is entering her 6th year as a teaching artist with the O, Miami Sunroom program. She resides in Carol City, with her daughter, by way of Richmond Heights, FL. 

Meet the artist Kristen Renee Miller at The Betsy-South Beach Library on December 19th starting at 6:00 PM EST.

Kristen Renee Miller is the incoming director and editor-in-chief for Sarabande Books. A poet and translator, she is the 2020 winner of the Gulf Coast Prize in Translation and the translator of two books of poetry from the French by Ilnu Nation poet Marie-Andrée Gill. Her work can be found widely, including in POETRY, The Kenyon Review, DIAGRAM, jubilat, and Best New Poets. She is the recipient of fellowships and awards from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, AIGA, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the American Literary Translators Association. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky.

Join Ruby Hansen Murray and Judy Ireland for a poetry reading at The Betsy-South Beach Library. November 8th, starting at 7:30 PM EST.

Ruby Hansen Murray is a columnist for the Osage News. A MacDowell fellow, she is winner of the Iowa Review and Montana Prizes, whose work has been nominated for Pushcart prizes and Best of the Net. Her work is forthcoming in Cascadia: A Field Guide (Tupelo Press). Find her in Ecotone, South Florida Poetry Review, River Mouth Review, Under the Sun, the Massachusetts Review, Pleiades, Moss, The Rumpus, and Shapes of Native Nonfiction. She’s a citizen of the Osage Nation with West Indian roots living in the lower Columbia River estuary. www.rubyhansenmurray.com

Judy Ireland is the author of a poetry collection, Cement Shoes, which won the Sinclair Poetry Prize.  Her poems have appeared in Hotel Amerika, Calyx, Saranac Review, Eclipse, Cold Mountain, Coe Review, and other journals, as well as in two anthologies, the Best Indie Lit New England anthology and Voices from the Fierce Intangible World.  She is Senior Poetry Editor & Reading Series Producer for the South Florida Poetry Journal and Co-Director of  Performance Poets of the Palm Beaches. She teaches at Palm Beach State College.

Meet the artist Ruby Hansen Murray at The Betsy-South Beach Library on November 8th starting at 6:00 PM EST.

Ruby Hansen Murray is a columnist for the Osage News. A MacDowell fellow, she is winner of the Iowa Review and Montana Prizes, whose work has been nominated for Pushcart prizes and Best of the Net. Her work is forthcoming in Cascadia: A Field Guide (Tupelo Press). Find her in Ecotone, South Florida Poetry Review, River Mouth Review, Under the Sun, the Massachusetts Review, Pleiades, Moss, The Rumpus, and Shapes of Native Nonfiction. She’s a citizen of the Osage Nation with West Indian roots living in the lower Columbia River estuary. www.rubyhansenmurray.com

Join Raina J. León and Susannah Winters Simpton for a poetry reading at The Betsy-South Beach Library. October 4th, starting at 7:30 PM EST.

Raina J. León, PhD is Black, Afro-Boricua, and from Philadelphia (Lenni Lenape ancestral lands). She is a mother, daughter, sister, madrina, comadre, partner, poet, writer, and teacher/educator. She believes in collective action and community work, the profound power of holding space for the telling of our stories, and the liberatory practice of humanizing education. She seeks out communities of care and craft and is a member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, Cave Canem, CantoMundo, and Macondo, among other creative communities. She is the author of black god mother this body, Canticle of Idols, Boogeyman Dawn, sombra : (dis)locate, and the chapbooks, profeta without refuge and Areyto to Atabey: Essays on the Mother(ing) Self. She publishes across forms in visual art, poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and scholarly work. She has received fellowships and residencies with the Obsidian Foundation, Community of Writers, Montana Artists Refuge, Macdowell, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Annamaghkerrig, Ireland and Ragdale, among others. She is a founding editor of The Acentos Review, an online quarterly, international journal devoted to the promotion and publication of Latinx arts. She recently retired early as a full professor of education at Saint Mary’s College of California, only the third Black person (all Black women) and the first Afro-Latina to achieve that rank there; she now holds professor emerita status, the first Black person to achieve the rank and third Latinx person. She currently supports poets and writers at the Stonecoast MFA at the University of Southern Maine. She is additionally a digital archivist, emerging visual artist, writing coach, and curriculum developer.

Susannah Winters Simpson is a hospice nurse, ESL tutor, and she facilitates her proprietary WriteRECOVERY curriculum in alcohol and drug treatment centers. Her work has been published in North American Review, Potomac, Wisconsin Review, South Carolina Review, POET, Nimrod International, Poet Lore, Salamander, Sequestrum, South Florida Poetry Journal, SWWIM Every Day, and Xavier Review among others. Her poems have been anthologized in Full Moon and Foxglove, Fierce Voices from the Intangible World  and Beyond Words: Women. Life. Her book, Geography of Love & Exile, was published by Cervena Barva Press. Susannah has been a founding member of both the New Mexico Poetry Alliance and Poets for Peace, Long Island Chapter. She currently serves as the founder and co-director of Performance Poets of the Palm Beaches. Susannah holds an MFA from Bennington, a Ph.D. from SUNY/Binghamton, and a postgraduate certificate from the Center for Journal Therapy.

Meet the artist Raina J. León at The Betsy-South Beach Library on October 4th starting at 6:00 PM EST.

Raina J. León, PhD is Black, Afro-Boricua, and from Philadelphia (Lenni Lenape ancestral lands). She is a mother, daughter, sister, madrina, comadre, partner, poet, writer, and teacher/educator. She believes in collective action and community work, the profound power of holding space for the telling of our stories, and the liberatory practice of humanizing education. She seeks out communities of care and craft and is a member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, Cave Canem, CantoMundo, and Macondo, among other creative communities. She is the author of black god mother this body, Canticle of Idols, Boogeyman Dawn, sombra : (dis)locate, and the chapbooks, profeta without refuge and Areyto to Atabey: Essays on the Mother(ing) Self. She publishes across forms in visual art, poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and scholarly work. She has received fellowships and residencies with the Obsidian Foundation, Community of Writers, Montana Artists Refuge, Macdowell, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Annamaghkerrig, Ireland and Ragdale, among others. She is a founding editor of The Acentos Review, an online quarterly, international journal devoted to the promotion and publication of Latinx arts. She recently retired early as a full professor of education at Saint Mary’s College of California, only the third Black person (all Black women) and the first Afro-Latina to achieve that rank there; she now holds professor emerita status, the first Black person to achieve the rank and third Latinx person. She currently supports poets and writers at the Stonecoast MFA at the University of Southern Maine. She is additionally a digital archivist, emerging visual artist, writing coach, and curriculum developer.

Join Felicia Zamora and Lolita Stewart-White for a poetry reading at The Betsy-South Beach Library. September 6th, starting at 7:30 PM EST.

Felicia Zamora is the author of six books of poetry including, I Always Carry My Bones, winner of the 2020 Iowa Poetry Prize (University of Iowa Press, 2021) and the 2022 Ohioana Book Award in Poetry, Body of Render, Benjamin Saltman Award winner (Red Hen Press, 2020), and Of Form & Gather, Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize winner (University of Notre Dame Press). She won the 2022 Loraine Williams Poetry Prize from The Georgia Review, a 2022 Tin House Next Book Residency, and a 2022 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, AGNI, Alaska Quarterly Review, The American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry 2022, Boston Review, Ecotone, The Georgia Review, Guernica,Gulf Coast, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review, Orion, Poetry Magazine, The Nation, West Branch, and others. She is an assistant professor of poetry at the University of Cincinnati and associate poetry editor for the Colorado Review.

Lolita Stewart-White is a poet, playwright and filmmaker who lives and works in Miami. She is a Pushcart nominee and the winner of the Paris American Readers Series. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Green Mountains Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, African American Review, Iowa Review, and Boston Review. She has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Palm Beach Poetry Festival and the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. Stewart-White is a part of City Theatre's BIPOC playwrighting development program. Her plays have been performed at the Adrienne Arsht Center and Mainstreet Players. Stewart-White's films have been exhibited at the Los Angeles Pan African Film and Arts Festival, Seattle Langston Hughes's Film Festival and Miami's Museum of Contemporary Art (Moca).

Meet the artist Felicia Zamora at The Betsy-South Beach Library on September 6th starting at 6:00 PM EST.

Felicia Zamora is the author of six books of poetry including, I Always Carry My Bones, winner of the 2020 Iowa Poetry Prize (University of Iowa Press, 2021) and the 2022 Ohioana Book Award in Poetry, Body of Render, Benjamin Saltman Award winner (Red Hen Press, 2020), and Of Form & Gather, Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize winner (University of Notre Dame Press). She won the 2022 Loraine Williams Poetry Prize from The Georgia Review, a 2022 Tin House Next Book Residency, and a 2022 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, AGNI, Alaska Quarterly Review, The American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry 2022, Boston Review, Ecotone, The Georgia Review, Guernica,Gulf Coast, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review, Orion, Poetry Magazine, The Nation, West Branch, and others. She is an assistant professor of poetry at the University of Cincinnati and associate poetry editor for the Colorado Review.

Join Didi Jackson and Judy Ireland for a poetry reading at The Betsy-South Beach Library. April 12th, starting at 7:30 PM EST.

Didi Jackson is the author of Moon Jar (Red Hen Press, 2020) and the forthcoming collection My Infinity. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Alaska Quarterly, Kenyon Review, The New Yorker, Oxford American, Ploughshares, and Virginia Quarterly Review among other journals and magazines. Her chapbook, Slag and Fortune was published by Floating Wolf Quarterly (2013). She has had poems selected for Best American Poetry, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-day, The Slow Down with Tracy K. Smith, and Together in Sudden Strangeness: America’s Poets Respond to the Pandemic. She is the recipient of the Robert H. Winner Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America and was a finalist for the Meringoff Prize in Poetry. 

Judy Ireland is the author of a poetry collection, Cement Shoes, which won the Sinclair Poetry Prize.  Her poems have appeared in Hotel Amerika, Calyx, Saranac Review, Eclipse, Cold Mountain, Coe Review, and other journals, as well as in two anthologies, the Best Indie Lit New England anthology and Voices from the Fierce Intangible World.  She is Senior Poetry Editor & Reading Series Producer for the South Florida Poetry Journal, Co-Director of  Performance Poets of the Palm Beaches, and teaches at Palm Beach State College.

Meet the artist Didi Jackson at The Betsy-South Beach Library on April 12th starting at 5:30 PM EST.

Didi Jackson is the author of Moon Jar (Red Hen Press, 2020) and the forthcoming collection My Infinity. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Alaska Quarterly, Kenyon Review, The New Yorker, Oxford American, Ploughshares, and Virginia Quarterly Review among other journals and magazines. Her chapbook, Slag and Fortune was published by Floating Wolf Quarterly (2013). She has had poems selected for Best American Poetry, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-day, The Slow Down with Tracy K. Smith, and Together in Sudden Strangeness: America’s Poets Respond to the Pandemic. She is the recipient of the Robert H. Winner Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America and was a finalist for the Meringoff Prize in Poetry. 

Meet the artist Suzanne Frischkorn at The Betsy-South Beach Library on March 16th starting at 5:30 PM EST.

Suzanne Frischkorn is the author of Fixed Star (JackLeg Press 2022), Girl on a Bridge, Lit Windowpane, and five chapbooks. Her honors include the Aldrich Poetry Award for her chapbook Spring Tide, selected by Mary Oliver, an Emerging Writers Fellowship from the Writer’s Center for her book Lit Windowpane, and an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism. Her poems have appeared in Copper Nickel, Ecotone, Indiana Review, The Los Angeles Review, North American Review, Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere. She is an editor for $ - Poetry is Currency and serves on the Terrain.org editorial board.

Join Suzanne Frischkorn and Susannah Simpson for a poetry reading at The Betsy-South Beach Library. March 15th, starting at 7:30 PM EST.

Suzanne Frischkorn is the author of Fixed Star (JackLeg Press 2022), Girl on a Bridge, Lit Windowpane, and five chapbooks. Her honors include the Aldrich Poetry Award for her chapbook Spring Tide, selected by Mary Oliver, an Emerging Writers Fellowship from the Writer’s Center for her book Lit Windowpane, and an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism. Her poems have appeared in Copper Nickel, Ecotone, Indiana Review, The Los Angeles Review, North American Review, Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere. She is an editor for $ - Poetry is Currency and serves on the Terrain.org editorial board.

Susannah Winters Simpson is a hospice nurse, ESL tutor, and she facilitates her proprietary WriteRECOVERY curriculum in alcohol and drug treatment centers. Her work has been published in North American Review, Potomac, Wisconsin Review, South Carolina Review, POET, Nimrod International, Poet Lore, Salamander, Sequestrum, South Florida Poetry Journal, SWWIM, and Xavier Review among others. Her poems have been anthologized in Full Moon and Foxglove, Fierce Voices from the Intangible World  and Beyond Words: Women. Life. Her book Geography of Love & Exile was published by Cervena Barva Press. Susannah has been a founding member of both the New Mexico Poetry Alliance and Poets for Peace, Long Island Chapter. She currently serves as the founder and co-director of Performance Poets of the Palm Beaches. Susannah holds an MFA from Bennington, a Ph.D. from SUNY/Binghamton, and a postgraduate certificate from the Center for Journal Therapy.