Poetry Reading

Ryan Black is the author of The Tenant of Fire (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019), winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, and Death of a Nativist, selected by Linda Gregerson for the Poetry Society of America's 2016 Chapbook Fellowship. He’s received fellowships and scholarships from the Adirondack Center for Writing, The Millay Colony for the Arts, PLAYA, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Queens Council on the Arts, and the T. S. Eliot House. He is an Assistant Professor of English at Queens College, and lives in Jackson Heights.

Vernita Hall is the author of Where William Walked: Poems About Philadelphia and Its People of Color, winner of the Willow Books Grand Prize for Poetry and of the Robert Creeley Prize from Marsh Hawk Press; and The Hitchhiking Robot Learns About Philadelphians, winner of the Moonstone (Press) Chapbook Contest. Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including African American Review,American Literary Review, Atlanta Review, and Mezzo Cammin. With fellowships and residencies from the Fine Arts Work Center (sponsored by Indolent Books), Ucross, and VCCA, she holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Rosemont College and serves on the poetry review board of Philadelphia Stories.

Devanshi Khetarpal is the author of Small Talk (Writers Workshop, 2019). Also an editor and translator, she is an undergraduate at NYU majoring in Comparative Literature with a minor in Creative Writing.  She has studied abroad for a summer at NYU Paris and for a semester at NYU Florence where she received the David J. Travis Undergraduate Research Fund for research on Modern Italy. She is the editor-in-chief and founder of Inklette Magazine, a poetry reader for Muzzle Magazine, an application manager for The Speakeasy Project and a former intern at Poets House and NYU La Pietra Dialogues. Her poetry collection, Small Talk, (Writers Workshop, 2019)Khetarpal was born and brought up in Bhopal, India, but currently lives in Manhattan, New York. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sahitya Akademi's Indian Literature, Transom, Best Indian Poetry 2018, Aainanagar, Vayavya, Souvenir, and TRACK//FOUR among others journals. Her website is www.devanshikhetarpal.co.