Video
Hard Hat Reading: Anastacia-Renee
Anastacia-Renee—multi-genre writer, educator, and interdisciplinary artist—reads “The Black Unicorn” by Audre Lorde, plus their own poem “Cloven Hoof Fortune Teller.”
Click Here to check out Anastacia-Renee’s 6-Week Workshop starting Oct 11, Crying Out Loud!
Anastacia-Renee (She/They) is an award-winning multi-genre writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, and speaker whose work has been published widely. Renee is the author of Sidenotes from the Archivist, (v.), Forget It, and Here in the (Middle) of Nowhere (forthcoming, HarperCollins Amistad, 2024).
Hard Hat Reading: Iain Haley Pollock
Poet, editor, and educator Iain Haley Pollock reads “if something should happen” by Lucille Clifton, and his own new poem in the spirit of Clifton, “All the Possible Bodies.”
Click Here to check out Iain’s Sep 23 workshop, Epiphanic Poems: Writing Moments of Revelation!
Iain Haley Pollock is the author of two poetry collections, Ghost, Like a Place and Spit Back a Boy. His poems have also appeared in many literary outlets, including African American Review, American Poetry Review, The New York Times Magazine, and The Progressive. Pollock has received the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, among others.
Hard Hat Reading: Jessica E. Johnson
Jessica E. Johnson—poet and October workshop leader—reads Rick Barot’s “The Marrow,” plus her own poem “Rabbits,” first published in Sixth Finch, Winter 2022.
Click here to check out Jessica’s Oct 15 workshop Kinship and/in Strangeness!
Jessica E. Johnson writes poetry, nonfiction, and between genres. She’s the author of the book-length poem Metabolics, the chapbook In Absolutes We Seek Each Other, and a forthcoming memoir. Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in The Paris Review, Tin House, The New Republic, Poetry Northwest, River Teeth, DIAGRAM, Annulet Poetics, The Southeast Review, and Sixth Finch among others. She’s based in Portland, Oregon and co-hosts the Constellation Reading Series at Tin House. Find out more about her here: https://www.chromeislands.com/
Hard Hat Reading: Sarah Stern
Poet and educator Sarah Stern reads “The Race,” by Sharon Olds, plus her own poem “Father Turns 80,” from We Have Been Lucky in the Midst of Misfortune.
Click here to check out Sarah’s Nov 9 workshop Poetry and Its Forms II: Learn the Rules, Then Break Them.
Sarah Stern is the author of We Have Been Lucky in the Midst of Misfortune, But Today Is Different, and Another Word for Love. Recipient of two Pushcart Prize nominations, Stern is also a five-time winner of the Bronx Council on the Arts’ BRIO Award for Poetry. More at www.sarahstern.me.
Hard Hat Reading: Cindy Juyoung Ok
Writer and editor Cindy Juyoung Ok reads “Party Dress for a First Born” by Rita Dove, plus work by Sandra Lim, and her own poem “Composition.”
Click Here to check out Cindy’s Sep 16 workshop, The Page as (W)hole!
Cindy Juyoung Ok teaches creative writing at Kenyon College, edits poetry at Guernica magazine, and hosts the Poetry Magazine Podcast. A MacDowell Fellow, she is the author of the chapbook House Work (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2023). Her debut full-length collection Ward Toward is forthcoming from Yale University Press in 2024. https://www.cindyjuyoungok.com/
Hard Hat Reading: Sunu P. Chandy
Poet and civil rights attorney Sunu P. Chandy reads “On Kindness” by Aracelis Girmay, plus her own poem “Teaching My Daughter How to Re-Cap the Toddler Toothpaste” from My Dear Comrades, as well as a new poem, “I Like Your Plant.”
Click Here to check out Sunu’s Sep 23 workshop, Poetry that Keeps Us Going!
Sunu P. Chandy (she/her) is a social justice activist through her work as a poet and a civil rights attorney. She’s a queer woman of color and lives in Washington, D.C. with her family. Sunu is the daughter of immigrants from Kerala, India. Her collection of poems, My Dear Comrades, was selected for the 2021 Terry J. Cox Prize, and published by Regal House in March 2023.
Hard Hat Reading: Francisco Aragón
Francisco Aragón, poet and Director of Letras Latinas, reads Adela Najarro’s “Volcanic Poetics,” and recent work of his own from After Rubén.
Aragón is the son of Nicaraguan immigrants. His books include, After Rubén (2020), Glow of Our Sweat (2010), and Puerta de Sol (2005). He’s also the editor of The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (2007). His work has appeared in over twenty anthologies. A native of San Francisco, CA, he is on the faculty of the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, where he teaches courses in Latinx poetry and creative writing. He also directs their literary initiative, Letras Latinas. For more information visit: http://franciscoaragon.net
Hard Hat Reading: Nicole Sealey
Nicole Sealey reads “Conditions for a Southern Gothic,” from Boy with Thorn by Rickey Laurentiis, plus her own poem “Imagine Sisyphus Happy,” from Ordinary Beast.
Nicole Sealey—poet and Poets House Board Member—is the author of The Ferguson Report (Penguin Random House, 2023), and Ordinary Beast (Ecco, 2017), which was a finalist for the PEN Open Book and Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Sealey’s chapbook, The Animal After Whom Other Animals are Named (Northwestern University Press, 2016), was the winner of the 2016 Drinking Gourd Chapbook Prize. In 2019, Sealey was named a 2019-2020 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University. She has received fellowships and awards from the American Academy in Rome, the Forward Foundation, CantoMundo, Cave Canem Foundation, the National Endowment and New York Foundation for the Arts, an Elizabeth George Foundation, among others. She was the Executive Director at Cave Canem Foundation from 2017–2019. Sealey lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Hard Hat Reading: Mark Wunderlich
Poet and educator Mark Wunderlich reads Lucie Brock-Broido’s “Am Moor” from The Master Letters, and a new poem of his own, “No Horse.”
Mark Wunderlich has published four collections of poetry, most recently God of Nothingness. Wunderlich’s first book, The Anchorage, received the Lambda Literary Award. A third volume of poems titled The Earth Avails, received the Rilke Prize from the University of North Texas and was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award. He has published individual poems in The New Yorker, The Believer, The Paris Review, and Slate, among others.
Wunderlich is the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, two fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation and the Amy Lowell Trust. He is Executive Director of the Bennington Writing Seminars graduate writing program.
Hard Hat Reading: Jacqueline Johnson
Jacqueline Johnson—poet, essayist, and fiber artist—reads “Advice,” by Ntozake Shange, plus her own poem, “Clara,” from A Gathering of Mother Tongues. Click Here to check out Jacqueline’s July 12 Workshop: Practices of Assembly!
Jacqueline Johnson is a multi-disciplined artist creating in poetry, fiction writing, and fiber arts. She is the author of A Woman’s Season, (Main Street Rag Press) and A Gathering of Mother Tongues (White Pine Press), and is the winner of the Third Annual White Pine Press Poetry Award. She has been awarded residencies at MacDowell Colony for the Arts, Blue Mountain Arts Colony, Hurston Wright, and Brooklyn Public Library Artist Residency.
Her work has appeared in: From the Belly: Poets Respond to Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons Volume I (Word Works, 2023); Revisiting the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era (Routledge, 2020); and The Slow Down (American Public Media, October 16). She is a Cave Canem fellow and Black Earth Institute Senior Fellow.
Works in progress include: The Privilege of Memory, a novel and How to Stop a Hurricane, a collection of short stories. She is a graduate of New York University and the City University of New York. A native of Philadelphia, PA., she resides in Brooklyn, New York.