Readings in honor of Letters from Max with Naa Akua, Julia Guez and Leah Umansky

Join Signature Theatre and Poets House on March 18 for a staging of Letters From Max, a ritual, written by Sarah Ruhl, directed by Kate Whoriskey, and based on the book by Sarah Ruhl & Max Ritvo. Poets House has curated readings between performances of the play in the theatre lobby at 5 pm and 7 pm, featuring poets Naa Akua, Julia Guez, and Leah Umansky reading their own work. 

Use promo code poetshouse for the March 18 performance of Letters From Max and a portion of your purchase will benefit Poets House. Purchase tickets HERE.

Naa Akua is a New York born poet, actor, educator, and sound-word practitioner who is Ghanaian/Bajan and queer. Akua uses the vibratory energy of sound and the intent of word as a vehicle towards healing. Akua, former 2019 Citizen University Poet-in-Residence is a Hugo House teacher and Young Women Empowered (Y-WE) youth facilitator. Naa Akua stars in Book-It Repertory’s 2021 adaption of N.K. Jemisin’s “The Effluent Engine,” directed and adapted by Jéhan Òsanyin. Akua was also a cast member of Sound Theater’s Gregory Award winning production of “Citizen, An American Lyric,” written by Claudia Rankine and produced by Jay ‘O Leary.  

Julia Guez is a writer and translator based in the city of New York. The Certain Body is her second collection of poetry, written while she was recovering from COVID in the spring of 2020. For her poetry, fiction and translations, Guez has been awarded the Discovery/Boston Review Prize, a Fulbright Fellowship and The John Frederick Nims Memorial Prize in Translation as well as a translation fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She holds degrees from Rice and Columbia. For the last decade, Guez has worked with Teach For America, New York; she teaches creative writing at NYU and Rutgers. 

Leah Umansky is the author of three books of poems, most recently OF TYRANT, forthcoming with The Word Works in 2024. She is currently working on a memoir DELICATE MACHINE, an exploration of womanhood, hope, and heart in the face of grief and a global pandemic. She earned her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and has curated and hosted The COUPLET Reading Series in NYC since 2011. Her creative work has appeared or is forthcoming in such places as The New York Times, POETRY, The Bennington Review, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, Guesthouse, and River Mouth Review. She can be found at www.leahumansky.com.