Award-winning poetry by established and emerging poets throughout the summer.
Jennifer Jean’s poetry collections include VOZ, Object Lesson, and The Fool. Her resource book is Object Lesson: a Guide to Writing Poetry. She’s co-written and co-translated the forthcoming collaborative and bilingual collection Where Do You Live? أين تعيش؟ (Arrowsmith Press, 2025) with Iraqi poet Hanaa Ahmed. As well, she’s edited the forthcoming anthology Other Paths for Shahrazad: a Bilingual Anthology of Poetry by Arab Women (Tupelo Press, 2025). Her poetry, prose, and co-translations appear in POETRY Magazine, Rattle Magazine, The Common, Los Angeles Review, Terrain, and On the Seawall. She’s received honors, residencies, and fellowships from the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, the Academy of American Poets, the Mass Cultural Council, DISQUIET, and the Women’s Federation for World Peace. Jennifer is the senior program manager of 24PearlStreet, the Fine Arts Work Center’s online writing program.
Patricia Spears Jones is an African American poet, playwright, cultural activist and recipient of the 2017 Jackson Poetry Prize and awards from the NEA, NYFA, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. She is the current New York State Poet. Author of The Beloved Community (Copper Canyon) and A Lucent Fire: New and Selected Poems (White Pine Press) and nine other poetry publications and plays commissioned by Mabou Mines. She edited THINK: Poems for Aretha Franklin’s Inauguration Day Hat and co-edited Ordinary Women: An Anthology of Poetry by New York City Women. She has taught at Barnard College, Hunter College, Adelphi University and Hollins University. She is an Emeritus Fellow for the Black Earth Institute and organizer of the American Poets Congress.
Joseph Ross is the author of five books of poetry: Crushed & Crowned (2023), Raising King (2020), Ache (2017), Gospel of Dust (2013) and Meeting Bone Man (2012). His poems appear in many publications including The New York Times Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, Xavier Review, Poet Lore, Fledgling Rag, The Langston Hughes Review, and the 2022 anthology, Where We Stand: Poems of Black Resilience. He won the 2012 Pratt Library / Little Pa;tuxent Review Prize for his poem “If Mamie Till Was the Mother of God.” He currently serves on the Poetry Board at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. He teaches English to high school students and writes regularly on his website.
Leah Umansky is a poet, writer, artist and teacher. She is the author of three collections of poetry, and two chapbooks. Her new book, of Tyrant is out now with Word Works Books. She earned her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and has curated and hosted The COUPLET Reading Series in the East Village since 2011. Her creative work can be found in such places as The New York Times, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A Day, Postcard Lit, and Poetry Magazine. She is currently at work on a collection of poems about wonder, joy and love. She is also the curator of the Stay Brave Substack which encourages women-identifying creatives to stay brave in their creative pursuits.
Jason Schneiderman is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Hold Me Tight (Red Hen, 2020), and including the forthcoming Self Portrait of Icarus as a Country on Fire (Red Hen, 2024). He edited the anthology Queer: A Reader for Writers (Oxford UP 2016). His poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. His awards include the Emily Dickinson Award, the Shestack Award and a Fulbright Fellowship. He is longtime co-host of the podcast Painted Bride Quarterly Slush Pile and a guest host for The Slowdown. He is Professor of English at the Borough of Manhattan Community College and teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.