Poetry Night at the Library! (Reading and Open Mic)

This event is in-person.

Come join us for a lovely night of poetry! Witness contemporary, groundbreaking work by featured poets Gabrielle Bates, Anthony Thomas Lombardi, and Daniella Toosie-Watson and stay for an open mic afterwards to share your own work or hear from others. Signups for the open mic are first come, first served, and doors will open at 5:45. Open mic performers will have 3 minutes each to read.

More about our featured guests:

Gabrielle Bates is the author of the poetry collection Judas Goat (Tin House), a NYT Book Review 'Shortlist' pick and a Chicago Review of Books 'must-read' book of 2023. Her work has been featured in the New Yorker, Poem-a-Day, Ploughshares, APR, The Slowdown show, and elsewhere, and she has served as visiting faculty for a variety of universities, arts organizations, and museums, including the University of Washington Rome Center. Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, Bates currently lives in Seattle, where she works for Open Books: A Poem Emporium and co-hosts the podcast The Poet Salon.

Anthony Thomas Lombardi is a Best of the Net- and Pushcart-nominated poet, editor, organizer,
and educator. He is the founder and director of Word is Bond, a community-centered reading series
partnered with the Asian American Writers’ Workshop that raises funds for transnational relief
efforts, bail funds, and mutual aid organizations, and currently serves as a poetry editor for Sundog
Lit. He has taught at Borough of Manhattan Community College, Paris College of Art, Brooklyn
Poets, Polyphony Lit’s Summer Editorial Apprenticeship Program, and community programming
throughout New York City. A recipient of the Poetry Project’s Emerge-Surface-Be Fellowship, his
work has appeared or will soon in the Poetry Foundation’s Ours Poetica, Guernica, Black Warrior
Review, Gulf Coast, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Massachusetts Review, North American Review, and
elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and their two cats.

Daniella Toosie-Watson (she/they) is a winner of the 2020 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest and has been published in The Atlantic, The Paris Review, Callaloo, Virginia Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, the Cincinnati Review and elsewhere. They were the profile writer for The Kennedy Center’s Next 50 initiative and are currently a Visiting Professor at Pratt Institute. Daniella received their MFA from the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers’ Program and lives in Brooklyn with their emotional support pup, Faye.