Five Smithie alum poets reading, 4-5pm ET

Michele Evans ‘94, Caroline M. Mar ‘05, Chloe Yelena Miller ‘98, Amanda Shaw ‘97J, Dara-Lyn Shrager ‘89

Register here for this Zoom event, hosted by the Smith College Boutelle-Day Poetry Center

Join poets Caroline M. Mar, Elizabeth T. Gray, and Bridget Bell for readings (with sound recordings!) and conversation at Second Take Sound in New York City.

Light refreshments will be provided.

PLEASE NOTE UPDATED TIME - 6PM

Join poets Caroline M. Mar & Leigh Lucas, who will read their poems and discuss love, loss, the physical and metaphysical properties of water, and more — all over a glass of wine!

Join poets Caroline M. Mar and Ross White for a reading and conversation at Scuppernong Books in Greensboro, North Carolina

In a love letter to two ancestors, Caroline M. Mar reckons with the shapes our bodies take in water and the shapes our bodies take in memory. By the icy waters where drowned Chinese railroad workers lay to rest, Dream of the Lake questions how our family stories slip away from us with each passing generation. Will our memories be preserved, or will we become characters in our children’s children’s retelling of history? These deeply resonant poems are songs of survival, navigating inheritance, identity, and language as they recover voices lost to time and lost to the lake.

Charm Offensive, Ross White's debut poetry collection, explores the space between Dickinson's directive to tell the truth slant and the universal reality of seeing the truth slant without knowing it. Charting the ways that tenderness can resolve into dissonance and uncertainty can resolve into transcendence, Charm Offensive crackles with the dangers of being alive and the joys of remaining defiant. At turns playful and surreal, exuberant and somber, these poems urge readers to find something new to trust in the world.

I’ll be joining the Bull City Press House Party Reading Series on May 10, 2025, in Durham, NC!

Lineup: Jennine Capo Crucet, Destiny Hemphill, Derek Palacio, & Caroline M. Mar

RSVP required!

Join us at the Museum for an exciting evening of music and spoken word inspired by the Asian American Experience, featuring the poetry of Caroline Mei-Lin Mar and the music of renowned jazz players Francis Wong and Scott Oshiro. This event is hosted by Lina Lin Hoshino and presented in partnership with the Petaluma Old Chinatown Ad Hoc Committee.

Plus, a tasting will be available with Buena Vista Winery, one of Sonoma County’s first employers of Chinese people.

Ticket Required! Purchase here.

Francis Wong has had an artistic career full of accomplishment and positive notice, including being considered one of "the great saxophonists of his generation" by the late jazz critic Phil Elwood. His work is well-documented on recordings, as he is featured on over forty titles as a leader and sideman. A critical vehicle for his work is Asian Improv aRts, the organization he co-founded in 1987 with pianist Jon Jang, which has been widely recognized for its role in creating a distinctive Asian American/West Coast sound in creative music.

Scott Oshiro is a Bay Area-based flutist and music technology researcher. As an African and Okinawan American, Scott’s creative and academic work incorporates influences from his heritage and combines them with Jazz, Hip Hop, and Electronic music. He recently received his Ph.D. at the Center for Computer Research in Music & Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford University, where he researched the intersection between quantum computing, music, and culture. Scott is an Asian Improv aRts fellow, developing quantum computer music improvisation systems for an album featuring BIPOC artists, showcasing the connection between music and quantum physics.

Caroline Mei-Lin Mar is the great-granddaughter of a railroad laborer and the author of Water Guest, the Editors’ Selection for the 2024 Wisconsin Poetry Series. She is the author of Special Education (Texas Review Press), which won the 2019 X. J. Kennedy Prize, and the chapbook Dream of the Lake (Bull City Press). Carrie is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, a member of Rabble Collective, and serves on the board of Friends of Writers. She is a longtime ninth grade health educator in her hometown of San Francisco, and lives in Oakland, CA. She has been granted residencies at Hedgebrook, Ragdale, and Storyknife, among others. You can find her online at carolinemar.com

A charming bookstore. A bar with excellent cocktails. Snacks. Seems like the right place! I’ll be reading and chatting with Perry Janes, author of the recent debut Find Me When You’re Ready, and I’m so excited to see all my Bay Area folks out for this event! Do I have to teach the next day? Yes. Will I go to bed early? Hell no! Come as an early bday gift to me!

Join Eleanor Wilner, Somayeh Shams, Adrienne Perry, & Carrie Mar for a reading and conversation to celebrate the launch of Carrie’s new collection, Water Guest, at Big Blue Marble in Philadelphia, PA.

A Rabble-ful event (we’ll miss Francine, currently based in Sweden!) with our Rabble elder, the iconic Eleanor Wilner. This is my east coast *launch,* the first real event of my book tour, and with this incredible group of thinkers it is sure to be a fabulous evening of conversation and love.

This event will also be streamed live online. Zoom registration link here

Courtney Bambrick teaches writing at Thomas Jefferson University’s East Falls campus in Philadelphia. She was poetry editor at Philadelphia Stories until 2024.  Her own poems appear or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Mom Egg Review, Landlocked, Pinhole, Thimble, SWWIM Everyday, New York Quarterly, Invisible City, and more. Her chapbook World Without is available from Bottlecap Press.
 
Caroline M. Mar is the great-granddaughter of a railroad laborer and the author of Water Guest, the Editors’ Selection for the 2024 Wisconsin Poetry Series. She is also the author of Special Education (Texas Review Press), which won the 2019 X. J. Kennedy Prize, and the chapbook Dream of the Lake (Bull City Press). Carrie is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, a member of Rabble Collective, and serves on the board of Friends of Writers. She is a longtime ninth grade health educator in her hometown of San Francisco, and lives in Oakland, CA. She has been granted residencies at Hedgebrook, Ragdale, and Storyknife, among others. You can find her online at carolinemar.com

Robert Zaller is Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at Drexel University.  Poet, critic, and historian, his books of verse include Speaking to Power and The Dresden Zoo, both published by Moonstone Press.

Rabble Collective will present a creative reading followed by a panel discussion exploring the theme of presence. Presence can mean many things — the now, the way a person carries herself, a tense for writing. To our collective, presence means radical hope, honesty, resistance, and the practice of a love ethic. Presence also means responding to the urgent challenges of our times, whether the climate crisis, technological developments with Al, threats to democracy, or the epidemic of loneliness.
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C.D. Wright was certainly a poet of presence - being present in a moment, with language, with an idea - or, as she once phrased it, "Uncommitted people don't hold my interest period." As we consider presence, we ask, "What is important to commit our attention to as writers? How might we pay attention to it in our art?" Through this reading and panel we seek to examine and engage with our audience about the meaning of presence in poetry and prose, including the literal, metaphorical, abstract, and associative.

Join us for a reading and conversation with our board member Natalie Baszile on October 13th 2022 at 7 pm EDT via Zoom, hosted by board member Caroline M. Mar. Natalie’s new non-fiction book, We Are Each Other’s Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers, Land & Legacy, brings together essays, poems, conversations, portraits, and first-person narratives to tell the story of Black people’s connection to the land from Emancipation to the present. Her previous novel, Queen Sugar, was named one of the San Francisco Chronicles’ Best Books of 2014, was long-listed for the Crooks Corner Southern Book Prize, and nominated for an NAACP Image Award. It is currently being adapted for a seventh television season by writer/director Ava DuVernay, and co-produced by Oprah Winfrey. Click here to register for Natalie’s reading! 

To celebrate 45 years of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and 30 years of Friends of Writers (FOW) scholarship support, we are hosting a series of (virtual) literary events across the country. Each is hosted and presented by regional writers but available nationally. Our goal is to raise funds with these regional events to support our ongoing mission to cultivate new and vital literary voices, and to celebrate the community and mutual support of writers. Specifically, your participation will contribute to scholarships and to Grants for Change to benefit BIPOC writers.

California reading: May 29, 4:00pm PT / 7:00pm ET
Register here

Hosts: Angela Narciso Torres, Chloe Martinez, Karen Llagas, and Peg Alford Pursell; music by Alicia Jo Rabins + raffle of signed books donated by the authors

Learn more about the whole lineup of events to support FOW here!

The Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College will host poets Carrie Mar ‘05 and Tommye Blount for a virtual reading and conversation. Blount was a National Book Award finalist for his debut collection, Fantasia for the Man in Blue (Four Way Books, 2020). Mar’s debut collection, Special Education (Texas Review Press, 2020) was the winner of the 2019 X. J. Kennedy Prize. The poets and friends will discuss their paths to first books, their poetic educations (which for Mar included her first workshop at the Poetry Center), and read from their work.

Thursday, January 26, 7:30-9:00PM ET

Link to register here.