Livestream via ZOOM (register for link)

It’s often asked if poetry matters. Four women poets will read work that demonstrates why it does. Patricia Brody, Elizabeth J. Coleman, Lucille Lang Day, and Alicia Ostriker will read work that helps light our way forward.

This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket with 30 max attendees along with a livestream. Please register in advance to attend in-person or virtually.

In compliance with Word Up Community Safety guidelines, all attendees for this event must wear a mask inside.

Word Up Community Bookshop is located at 2113 Amsterdam Ave. (& 165th St.) in Washington Heights, NYC. You can take the 1 train to 168th St and the A/C train to 163rd or 168th  St.

ABOUT THE POETS

Alicia Ostriker has published 19 collections of poetry, been twice nominated for the National Book Award, and has twice received the National Jewish Book Award for Poetry, among other honors.  As a critic she is the author of the now-classic Stealing the Language: the Emergence of Women’s Poetry in America. Her most recent collections of poems are Waiting for the Light and The Volcano and After: Selected and New Poems 2002-2019. She was New York State Poet Laureate (2018-2021) and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets (2015-2020). She lives with her husband on the Upper West Side.

Patricia Brody taught English and American Literature at Boricua College in Washington Heights. She became a Heights citizen in 2010 when she first walked through the door of the first Word Up bookstore! Patricia practiced family therapy in New York City for 30 years, while raising three children with her artist husband Tom Kostro. My Blazing World is Patricia’s second collection from Salmon Poetry. Her earlier books are Dangerous to Know (poems in the voices of forgotten women artists & writers) and American Desire, which won Finishing Line’s 2009 New Women’s Voices Award. Via Zoom, Patricia now teaches Seeking Your Voice: Women Writing Poetry & Memoir, a course that originated at Barnard College Center for Research on Women.

Lucille Lang Day is the author of four poetry chapbooks and seven full-length collections, most recently Birds of San Pancho and Other Poems of Place. She is also the editor of Poetry and Science: Writing Our Way to Discovery, coeditor of Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California and Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California, and author of two children’s books and a memoir. Her many honors include the Blue Light Poetry Prize, two PEN Oakland – Josephine Miles Literary Awards, the Joseph Henry Jackson Award, and eleven Pushcart nominations. She is the publisher of Scarlet Tanager Books. https://lucillelangday.com

Elizabeth J. Coleman is the editor of Here: Poems for the Planet (Copper Canyon Press, 2019), an international ecopoetry anthology with a forward from His Holiness the Dalai Lama and an activist guide from the Union of Concerned Scientists. She is the author of two poetry collections from Spuyten Duyvil Press (one, Proof, a University of Wisconsin Press prize finalist), and of four chapbooks. Her poems appear in numerous journals and anthologies, including the forthcoming Elemental Series (Humans and Nature Press). Elizabeth’s new collection was a finalist for the 2023 Cider Press and 2023 Marsh Hawk Press Prizes. For many years, she was a public interest attorney, and she currently teaches mindfulness. Her avocation is classical guitar. https://www.elizabethjcoleman.com