Poetry Reading

Devanshi Khetarpal is a senior at New York University (NYU) majoring in Comparative Literature with a minor in Creative Writing. She was born and brought up in Bhopal, India, and moved to Manhattan nearly three years ago. She is the editor-in-chief of Inklette Magazine, a poetry reader for Muzzle Magazine, a staff writer for West 10th, and a former intern at Poets House. Her poetry collection, 'Small Talk,' was published in 2019 by Writers Workshop India, Kolkata, and her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Underblong Journal, Transom, Best Indian Poetry 2018, Indian Literature, Vayavya, and Aainanagar among others. Khetarpal has studied abroad at NYU Florence and NYU Paris, and is a recipient of the 2018 David J. Travis Undergraduate Research Fund for research on Modern Italy. She is currently planning to write her honors thesis in Comparative Literature on Elena Ferrante's works and how they shape the relationship between urbanity and womanhood. 

Josephine Blair is a 27-year-old writer who recently relocated from Miami to Brooklyn. She majored in global studies and political economy at St. Lawrence University, but somehow decided that she’d rather travel while working in restaurants and writing poetry than work for the government. She has called places from Rouen to San Ignacio to Dakar home, and her poetry has been featured in Epiphany Magazine, Soliloquies Anthology, Meniscus, Allegory Ridge and elsewhere. In February 2019, she was awarded a Brooklyn Poets fellowship, and her poem “Jalex” was a finalist in the 2019 Brooklyn Poets Poem of the Year Smackdown. You can follow her at instagram.com/josephine_blair.

Kyndal Thomas is a Texas-raised, Brooklyn-based poet. She graduated with honors from the creative writing program at Northwestern University, where she received a Faricy Award for Poetry. Her work explores multiraciality, privilege, lineage and intimacy as navigated within the everyday. She works in the literary nonprofit sphere and is passionate about inclusive and accessible creative spaces.  In the summer of 2019, she was awarded a Brooklyn Poets Fellowship. In her spare time, you can find her listening to ghost podcasts and attempting to prove to her loved ones that she has, in fact, taught her cat how to play fetch. You can follow her at instagram.com/kyn__marie.

Lourdes Figueroa was born in Yuba City, California during a trip her parents made from Mexico to the USA when they worked in the campo tilling the soil for tomatoes. Lourdes is a proud 2009 and 2011 VONA alum. Her work has been published in the SF Poet’s 11 2008 & 2010 an Anthology by Jack Hirschman, in Eleven Eleven, Something Worth Revising, Night Music, elderly, the zine Mirage, Spooky Actions Books published her first chapbook, yolotl, and her poem War America War was published by Backwords Press. She received her MFA in Creative Writing with an emphasis in Poetry at the University of San Francisco. She works in San Francisco as community organizer, a families case-worker, and occasionally as a camera assistant. She continues to believe in your lung and your throat.