Celebrating Walt Whitman with Mark Doty and Donna Masini

Award-winning poetry by established and emerging poets throughout the summer.

We are excited to produce a special performance honoring America's world poet, Walt Whitman, with readings by poets Mark Doty and Donna Masini, hosted by Jason Schneiderman. 

Mark Doty’s ten books of poetry include Fire TO Fire: New & Selected Poems, which won the National Book Award in 2008. He has also published five books of nonfiction prose, most recently What is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life, which NPR called “a celebration of gay manhood, queerness, and the power and elasticity of poetry."

Donna Masini is the author of three books of poems--4:30 Movie (W.W. Norton, 2018), Turning to Fiction (Norton, 2004), That Kind of Danger (Beacon Press, 1994)--and a novel, About Yvonne (Norton,1998). Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies including American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, Poetry, Ploughshares, Paris Review, and Five Points. A recipient of National Endowment for the Arts and NY Foundation for the Arts grants, a Pushcart Prize, as well as fellowship residencies at Civitella Ranieri, Bogliasco and Yaddo, she is a Professor of English/Creative Writing at Hunter College. She is currently at work on her new collection of poems, In Cahoots.

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.