The Deerfield Public Library Podcast

We're back for year five of Queer Poem-a-Day! Queer Poem-a-Day is a unique podcast series for Pride Month, presenting a public archive of original poems written and read by contemporary LGBTQIA+ poets. For this fifth year, we'll be sharing a poem each weekday in June. Get exciting with this audio collage "cento" trailer, featuring some of the voices from year five (see if you can recognize the voi...

A conversation with Dr. Jo Freer , a leading scholar on the work of American novelist Thomas Pynchon. I'm currently leading our Library's Classics Book Discussion Seminar series on Pynchon's 1973 masterpiece Gravity's Rainbow and Dr. Freer's work has been incredibly helpful for me in understanding this challenging novel and Pynchon's work as a whole. We're thrilled to get Dr. Freer's perspective o...

Richard Powers talks about his new novel Playground (W. W. Norton & Co., 2024). Playground gives us a masterful braided narrative of lives devoted to oceanography, computer programming, art, and literature, taking us from French Polynesia to right here in Illinois.  Powers is the author of fourteen acclaimed novels, including Orfeo (2014), The Overstory (2018), and Bewilderment (2021). He is the r...

Lois Baer Barr—a poet and fiction writer living just next door to us in Riverwoods, IL—on her new novel The Tailor's Daughter (Water's Edge Press, 2023). The Tailor's Daughter uses Barr's familial memories and prodigious research to explore the life of a Jewish immigrant family making their lives in Louisville, KY in the interwar years. Encompassing such dramatic history as the Great Depression, t...

Day 20: Mary Jo Bang reads her poem "Mary Jo in the Time of Sappho." We are honored to be the original publication of this poem. Mary Jo Bang is the author of nine books of poems—including A Film in Which I Play Everyone, which was nominated for a Lammy Award, A Doll for Throwing, and Elegy, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has published translations of Dante's Inferno, i...

Day 19: Armen Davoudian reads his poem "Saffron," from his new collection The Palace of Forty Pillars, also published in The Atlantic (2024).  Armen Davoudian is the author of the poetry collection THE PALACE OF FORTY PILLARS (Tin House) and the translator, from Persian, of HOPSCOTCH by Fatemeh Shams (Ugly Duckling Presse). He grew up in Isfahan, Iran, and is a PhD candidate in English at Stanford...

Day 18: Esther Lin reads her poem "Praise the Scaffold in Rouen Cathedral." We are honored to be the first publication of this poem.  Esther Lin was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and lived in the United States as an undocumented immigrant for 21 years. Her forthcoming book _Cold Thief Place_ is the winner of the 2023 Alice James Award. She has been a Writing Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center,...

Day 17:  Sebastian Merrill reads his poem "To My Ghost :: Float" from his book GHOST :: SEEDS (Texas Review Press, 2022).  Sebastian Merrill's debut collection GHOST :: SEEDS was selected by Kimiko Hahn as the winner of the 2022 X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize, published by Texas Review Press in November 2023. A winner of the 2024 Stonewall Honor Book - Barbara Gittings Literature Award from the Americ...

Day 16: Matthew Gellman reads his poem "Beforelight," originally published in Passages North, 2018.  Matthew Gellman is the author of a chapbook, Night Logic, which was selected by Denise Duhamel as the winner of Tupelo Press' 2021 Snowbound Chapbook Award. His first book, Beforelight, was selected by Tina Chang as the winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize and is forthcoming from BOA Editions....

Day 15: Cindy Juyoung Ok reads her poem "Claim." They originally published the poem in Conjunctions Issue 75 (Fall 2020).  Cindy Juyoung Ok is the author of Ward Toward from the Yale Series of Younger Poets and an assistant English professor at the University of California Davis.  Text of today's poem and more details about our program can be found at:  deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/ Find boo...

Day 14: Yinlin Zhao reads its poem "The Mpreg Poem." We are honored to be the poem's first publication. Yinlin Zhao (he/it/go for it, truly) is a writer/student out on the East Coast and on the world wide web. All the stuff it makes is probably about robots, bugs, or a secret third thing. His work has been published in warning lines literary, Hominum Journal, The Dawn Review, and antinarrative, an...

Day 13: Séamus Isaac Fey reads his poem "Edwin says I deserve to be loved with precision" which appears in their new collection decompose (Not a Cult Media, 2024).  Séamus Isaac Fey (he/they) is a Trans writer living in LA. Currently, he is the poetry editor at Hooligan Magazine, and co creative director at Rock Pocket Productions. His debut poetry collection, decompose, is out with Not a Cult Med...

Day 12: Fatimah Asghar reads their poem "The Ocean is Trynna Fuck," originally published in the American Poetry Review, 2023.  Fatimah Asghar is an artist who spans across different genres and themes. They have been featured in various outlets such as TIME, NPR, Teen Vogue and the Forbes 30 Under 30 List. They are the author of If They Come For Us  and When We Were Sister, which was longlisted for...

Day 11: Joshua Garcia reads "Epistle (Deluge)" which first appeared in New South and appears in his new collection Pentimento. Joshua Garcia is the author of Pentimento (Black Lawrence Press 2024). His poetry has appeared in Ecotone, The Georgia Review, Passages North, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from the College of Charleston and has received a Stadler Fellowship from Bucknell Un...

Day 10: p. hodges adams reads their poem "pêche d'enfer," originally published in the New Orleans Review, 2022.  p. hodges adams is a michigander poet who received their MFA in creative writing from the university of virginia, where they currently teach as a lecturer. their work can be found in cutbank, fourteen poems, december magazine, and elsewhere. hopefully they will turn into a beam of sunli...

Day 9: Jimin Seo reads his poem "Richard Wakes Up in The Middle of The Night" forthcoming from his book OSSIA (Changes, 2024).  Jimin Seo was born in Seoul, and immigrated to the US to join his family at the age of eight. He is the author of OSSIA, a winner of The Changes Book Prize. His poems can be found in Action Fokus, The Canary, annulet, Pleiades, mercury firs, and The Bronx Museum. His most...

Day 8: Amelia Ada reads an excerpt from her collection Hard and Glad, forthcoming from DOPAMINE/Semiotext(e) May 2026.  Amelia Ada is a trans poet and essayist, and she is currently a doctoral candidate in literature and creative writing at the University of Southern California. Her writing has appeared widely in journals, and she is the co-creator and co-host of the podcast You Shouldn't Let Poet...

Day 7: Mark Wunderlich reads his poem "No Horse." We are honored to be the first publisher of this poem.  Mark Wunderlich is the author of four collections of poems, the most recent of which is God of Nothingness published by Graywolf Press.  His other collections include The Earth Avails, winner of the Rilke Prize, Voluntary Servitude, and The Anchorage, which received the Lambda Literary Award. ...

Day 6: Angel Nafis reads her poem "Why R&B First Thing in the Morning, Why R&B Above All," originally published on The Rumpus in 2015.  Born in Chicago, Illinois and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Angel Nafis is a writer and the author of BlackGirl Mansion (Red Beard Press/ New School Poetics, 2012). She earned her BA at Hunter College and her MFA in poetry at Warren Wilson College. Her work has a...

Day 5: Gabrielle Bates reads her poem "Intro to Theater," which appears in her collection Judas Goat (Tin House, 2023) [and an an earlier version of it appeared in Ploughshares].  Gabrielle Bates is the author of Judas Goat (Tin House, 2023), named Electric Lit's top poetry book of the year and an NPR Best Book of 2023. Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, she currently lives in Seattle, where she...

Day 4: Richard Siken reads his new poem Cover Story, originally published in Pithead Chapel, which will appear in his forthcoming book I Do Know Some Things (Copper Canyon Press, 2025).  Richard Siken is a poet, painter, and filmmaker. His book Crush won the 2004 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, selected by Louise Glück, a Lambda Literary Award, a Thom Gunn Award, and was a finalist for the Nat...

Day 3: Leslie Sainz reads her poem "At the Center of the Story & Utterly Left Out", originally published in The Common (2023).  Leslie Sainz is the author of Have You Been Long Enough at Table (Tin House, 2023), a finalist for the 2024 Audre Lorde Award. The daughter of Cuban exiles, her work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day, the Yale Review, Kenyon Review, American Poetry...

Day 2: Eduardo C. Corral read the title poem of his 2020 collection Guillotine (Graywolf Press).  Eduardo C. Corral is the son of Mexican immigrants. He's the author of Guillotine, published by Graywolf Press, and Slow Lightning, which won the 2011 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. He's the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship, a Whiting Writers' Aw...

Day 1: jason b. crawford reads their poem "Untitled 1975-86." We are honored to be the first publication of this poem. jason b. crawford is a writer born in Washington DC, raised in Lansing, MI. Their debut Full-Length Year of the Unicorn Kidz is out from Sundress Publications. They are a 2023 Lambda Literary Emerging LGBTQ Voices fellow. Their second collection, YEET! is forthcoming from Omnidawn...

Queer Poem-a-Day is a unique podcast series for Pride Month, presenting a public archive of poems written and read by contemporary LGBTQIA+ poets. For this fourth year, we are sharing a poem each weekday in June on our podcast and on our website. Enjoy this audio trailer featuring a collage of some of our voices for 2024. Get episodes of poets reading their poems each weekday starting Monday, June...