YMCA
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Christopher Kennedy is the author of The Strange God Who Makes Us (2024), Clues from the Animal Kingdom (2018), Ennui Prophet (2011), Encouragement for a Man Falling to His Death (2007), which received the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, each published by BOA Editions, Ltd. He is one of the translators of Light and Heavy Things: Selected Poems of Zeeshan Sahil (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2013), published as part of the Lannan Translation Series. His work has appeared in many print and online journals, including Ploughshares, The Progressive, Plume, Ninth Letter, The Threepenny Review, Mississippi Review, and McSweeney's. In 2011, he was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry. He is a professor of English in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Syracuse University.

This event will be held in person and on Zoom.

YMCA
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse

Samodh Porawagamage is the author of becoming sam, published by Burnside Review Press, and All the Salty Sand in Our Mouths, forthcoming from Airlie Press. A practice-based researcher, he writes about the Sri Lankan Civil War, 2004 tsunami, elephant-human conflict, poverty and underdevelopment, lasting effects of colonialism, and disproportionate impacts of climate change on rural and marginalized communities. He enjoys long hikes, birdwatching, martial arts, haphazard cooking, and ghost stories. He works at Hamilton College.

Jessica Cuello's most recent book, Yours, Creature (JackLeg Press, 2023), was a finalist for the Philip McMath Poetry Prize. Her book Liar, selected by Dorianne Laux for The 2020 Barrow Street Book Prize, was honored with The Eugene Nassar Prize, The CNY Book Award, and a finalist nod for The Housatonic Book Award. Cuello is also the author of Hunt (The Word Works, 2017) and Pricking (Tiger Bark Press, 2016). Cuello has been awarded a 2023 NYSCA Artist Grant, The 2022 Nina Riggs Poetry Prize, two CNY Book Awards, The 2016 Washington Prize, The New Letters Poetry Prize, a Saltonstall Fellowship, and The New Ohio Review Poetry Prize. She is poetry editor at Tahoma Literary Review and teaches French in Central NY.

This event will be held in person and on Zoom.

Online

Sara Daniele Rivera is a Cuban Peruvian American artist, writer, translator, and educator. Her writing has appeared in The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext, Solstice, Waxwing, Speculative Fiction for Dreamers: A Latinx Anthology, and elsewhere. She was the recipient of a 2017 St. Botolph Club Emerging Artist Award, the winner of the 2018 Stephen Dunn Prize in Poetry (Solstice Magazine), and a 2022 Tin House resident. She is a co-translator of The Blinding Star: Selected Poems by Blanca Varela (Tolsun Books, 2021) and co-editor of Not Your Papi's Utopia: Latinx Visions of Radical Hope (Mouthfeel Press, 2025). Her debut book of poetry, The Blue Mimes (Graywolf Press, 2024), won the 2023 Academy of American Poets First Book Award. She lives in Albuquerque, NM.

Leslie B. Neustadt is a retired attorney, poet, and collage artist. Her books include Becoming Fruit: a Poetic Journey (Spirit Wind Books, 2014), and most recently, The Sustenance of Stars (Kelsay Books, 2024). Her poems have been published in a number of anthologies and journals, including Veils, Halos & Shackles, International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women; The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary American Jewish Poetry; Rumors Secrets & Lies: Stories & Poems About Pregnancy, Abortion & Choice, and others. She is a board member of the International Women's Writing Guild, chairs its program committee, and produces their workshop series. She lives in Niskayuna, NY.

Online

Jan Beatty's eighth book, Dragstripping, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, September, 2024. Her memoir, American Bastard, won the Red Hen Nonfiction Award. Recent books include The Body Wars and a chapbook, Skydog (Lefty Blondie Press, 2022). Other work includes Jackknife: New and Selected Poems (University of Pittsburgh, 2018 Paterson Prize) named by Sandra Cisneros on LitHub as her favorite book of 2019. Beatty has worked as a waitress, abortion counselor, and in maximum security prisons. She is Professor Emerita at Carlow University, where she directed creative writing, the Madwomen in the Attic workshops, and the MFA program.

Online

Joy Ladin is the author of 10 books of poetry, including her latest collection, Shekhinah Speaks; National Jewish Book Award winner The Book of Anna; and Lambda Literary Award finalists Transmigration and Impersonation, reissued in a revised edition as a free PDF from DoubleBack in April. A new collection, Family, is new in September 2024. She has published a memoir of gender transition, National Jewish Book Award finalist Through the Door of Life, and another work of creative non-fiction, Lambda Literary and Triangle Award finalist, The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective. Once Out of Nature, a collection of essays on the transformation of gender, will also be published in September. Episodes of her online conversation series, "Containing Multitudes," are available at JewishLive.org/multitudes; her writing is available at joyladin.com.

YMCA
340 Montgomery St., Syracuse