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Poetry with Isabelle Baafi, Richard Chess, Kyle Liang, and Dorsía Smith Silva

July 15, 2025, 6:00pm–7:00pm

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

Isabelle Baafi is the author of Chaotic Good (Faber & Faber / Wesleyan University Press, 2025), which is a Poetry Book Society (PBS) Recommendation, and Ripe (ignitionpress, 2020), which won a Somerset Maugham Award and was a PBS Pamphlet Choice. She has a BA in Comparative Literature and Film from the University of Kent, and an MSt with Distinction in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford, where she was a Kellogg Scholar. She won First Prize in the Winchester Poetry Prize 2023 and Second Prize in the London Magazine Poetry Prize 2022. Her writing has been published in Granta, the TLS, The Poetry Review, Callaloo, The London Magazine, and elsewhere. She is a Ledbury Poetry Critic and an Obsidian Foundation Fellow. She edits at Poetry London and Magma.

Richard Chess is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Love Nailed to the Doorpost. He is a regular contributor to "Close Reading," the blog hosted by Slant Books. His next book of poetry, The Loneliest Monk, is forthcoming from Orison Books. He serves on the board of Yetzirah: a Hearth for Jewish Poetry.

Kyle Liang is the son of Taiwanese and Malaysian immigrants and a descendant of the Dachen Islands. He is the author of the full-length poetry collection Good Son (Sundress Publications, 2024) and the chapbook How to Build a House (winner of the 2017 Swan Scythe Press Chapbook Contest). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best of the Net, Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. His work has been nominated for Best New Poets and the Pushcart Prize. Kyle works as a physician assistant at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, and he teaches at Brooklyn Poets and Quinnipiac University.

Dorsía Smith Silva is the author of In Inheritance of Drowning (CavanKerry, 2024), which was a finalist for the Whirling Prize and reviewed by Publishers Weekly. She is a multi-nominated Pushcart Prize nominee, Best of the Net finalist, Best New Poets nominee, Cave Canem Poetry Prize Semifinalist, Obsidian Fellow, Poetry Editor at The Hopper, and Full Professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. Literary Hub, Poets.org, and The Los Angeles Review have published her work, and she has received fellowships and scholarships from Bread Loaf and the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Moreover, she is the author of Good Girl (poetry micro-chapbook), editor of Latina/Chicana Mothering, and the co-editor of seven books. Looking to increase the visibility of poetry by BIPOC authors, she is the creator of the Smith Silva Challenge which is a reading challenge that highlights poetry books by BIPOC authors.