The Woodberry Poetry Room welcomes you to its first Vocarium Reading of the year, featuring Robin Coste Lewis (author of To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness, 2023)--who will read virtually--and Brenda Hillman (author of A Few Minutes Before Later, 2023), who will read in-person.

The reading will be introduced by Fanny Howe. Afterwards, please join us for a book-signing provided by Grolier Poetry Book Shop. Come one, come all.
 

In-Person Attendance:  Edison Newman Room, Houghton Library, Harvard University. Free and open to the public. Doors will open at 5:30pm to allow you to buy books and hang out with your fellow poets and audience members.

Online Attendance: Livestreaming available via the WPR YouTube Channel at 6:00pm (Eastern Standard Time).

ABOUT ROBIN COSTE LEWIS: Lewis is the author of To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness (Knopf, 2023), which recently won an NAACP Award in Poetry and PEN Award in Poetry, and Voyage of the Sable Venus (Knopf, 2015), which won the National Book Award in poetry––the first time a poetry debut by an African-American had ever won the prize in the National Book Foundation's history. Lewis’s writing has appeared in various journals and anthologies, such as The New Yorker, The New York Times, Paris Review, Transition, and Best American Poetry. The former poet laureate of Los Angeles, Lewis has taught on the faculty of Wheaton College, Hunter College, and Hampshire College. Currently, she teaches in NYU's low-residency MFA in Paris, and is a writer-in-residence at the University of Southern California. 

ABOUT BRENDA HILLMAN: Hillman is the author of ten collections of poetry: White Dress, Fortress, Death Tractates, Bright Existence, Loose Sugar, Cascadia, Pieces of Air in the Epic, Practical Water, for which she won the LA Times Book Award for Poetry, Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire, which received the 2014 Griffin Poetry Prize and the Northern California Book Award for Poetry; Extra Hidden Life, Among the Days and A Few Minutes Before Later. In 2016 she was named Academy of American Poets Chancellor. Among other awards Hillman has received are the 2012 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the 2005 William Carlos Williams Prize for poetry, and Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. 

We welcome you to contact us with any questions about this event. We can be reached by email at poetryrm@fas.harvard.edu or via phone at (617) 495-2454. Persons with disabilities who would like to request accommodations or have questions about physical access may contact Houghton Library's Administrative Coordinator Le Huong Huynh by email or at 617-495-2443 in advance of the reading.