The Deerfield Public Library Podcast

Xandria Phillips is a Whiting Award-winning poet, and visual artist from rural Ohio. The recipient of a LAMBDA Literary Award, and the Judith A. Markowitz Award for Emerging writers, Xandria is the author of HULL (Nightboat Books 2019) and Reasons for Smoking, which won the 2016 Seattle Review Chapbook Contest judged by Claudia Rankine. They have received fellowships from Brown University, Callalo...

Jay Besemer is the author of the poetry collections Theories of Performance (The Lettered Streets Press, 2020), The Ways of the Monster (KIN(D) Texts and Projects/The Operating System, 2018), Crybaby City (Spuyten Duyvil, 2017), Chelate (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2016) and Telephone (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2013). He is a 2021 Lambda Literary Award Finalist for Transgender Poetry, and was a finalist for t...

Catherine Pond was born in New York City and grew up in Georgia. She is the author of Fieldglass (Southern Illinois University Press 2021), winner of the Crab Orchard First Book Prize. Her poems have appeared in Best New Poets, Best American Nonrequired Reading, AGNI, The Adroit Journal, Narrative, and other publications. Pond is a PhD candidate in Literature & Creative Writing at the University o...

Cyril Wong has been described by The Oxford Companion to Modern Poetry in English as a confessional poet in Singapore, based mainly on "a barely submerged anxiety over the fragility of human connection and a relentless self-querying". His most recent book is Infinity Diary , published by Seagull Books in 2020. A past recipient of the National Arts Council's Young Artist Award and two Singapore Lit...

Phillip B. Williams is from Chicago, IL and author of the book Thief in the Interior (Alice James 2016). A recipient of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, Lambda Literary Award, and Whiting Award, he currently teaches at Bennington College and the Randolph College low-residency MFA. Twitter: PBW_POET Instagram: PBW_POET "Of Contour, Of Cadence" was originally published in Thief in the Interior (Alice...

Julia Guez is a writer and translator based in Brooklyn. Her essays, interviews, fiction, poetry and translations have appeared in Guernica, POETRY, The Guardian, BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail and Kenyon Review. Four Way Books released her first full-length collection, In An Invisible Glass Case Which Is Also A Frame , in 2019; they will release her second book, The Certain Body, in 2022. For the last d...

Rachel Mennies is the author of the poetry collections The Naomi Letters (BOA Editions, 2021) and The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards, the 2014 winner of the Walt McDonald First-Book Prize in Poetry at Texas Tech University Press and finalist for a National Jewish Book Award. Her poetry has recently appeared at The Believer, Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Rachel's essays,...

Richie Hofmann's new book of poems, A Hundred Lovers, will be published by Knopf in 2022. A former Stegner Fellow, he currently teaches at Stanford University. Twitter: @richiehof , Instagram: @richiehof "Male Beauty" originally appeared in The Sewanee Review (Summer 2020). Text of today's poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/ Find books from...

Henri Cole was born in Fukuoka, Japan, in 1956. He has published over half a dozen collections of poetry, including Touch, Pierce the Skin, and Blizzard ; a memoir, Orphic Paris; and has received many awards for his work, including the Jackson Poetry Prize, the Kingsley Tufts Award, the Rome Prize, the Berlin Prize, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and the Award of Merit Medal in Poetry from the...

Chen Chen is the author of When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, 2017), which was long listed for the National Book Award and won the Thom Gunn Award, among other honors. His work appears/is forthcoming in many publications, including Ploughshares, Poem-a-Day, and three editions of The Best American Poetry (2015, 2019, and 2021). He has received a Pushcart Priz...

H. Melt is a poet, artist and educator whose work celebrates trans people, history and culture. They are the author of The Plural, The Blurring and editor of Subject to Change: Trans Poetry & Conversation. Lambda Literary awarded them the Judith A. Markowitz Award for Emerging LGBTQ Writers. Their next book, There Are Trans People Here, is forthcoming from Haymarket Books in the fall of 2021. Twit...

Ruben Quesada is the author of Revelations and Next Extinct Mammal. His writing has appeared in the Best American Poetry, Harvard Review, American Poetry Review, and other anthologies and journals. He is a blogger at The Kenyon Review, the founding director of the monthly Mercy Street Readings. He lives in Chicago. Twitter: @rubenquesada . https://www.rubenquesada.com/ "Billow of Thistles" origina...

Andrea Cohen's poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. Her most recent poetry collections are Everything , Nightshade and Unfathoming. Cohen directs the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Cambridge, MA.   https://www.andreacohen.org/ "Eavesdropping on Adam and Eve" was originally published in Copper Nickel. Text of today's poem and more det...

Gala Mukomolova is a Moscow-born, Brooklyn-raised, poet and essayist. Her full length book, Without Protection, is available through Coffee House Press . Her chapbook, One Above One Below: Positions & Lamentations, is available with YesYes Books. She is a recipient of the 2016 Discovery Prize from 92nd St Y & Boston Review and has held residencies at Vermont Studio Center, Pink Door, and ASYLUM Ar...

Sam Herschel Wein (he/they) is a Chicago-based poet who specializes in perpetual frolicking. Their second chapbook, GESUNDHEIT!, a collaboration with Chen Chen, was part of the 2019-2020 Glass Poetry Press Series. He co-founded and edits Underblong. Recent work can be found in Moon City Review, Sundog Lit, and Bat City Review, among others. Instagram: @samforbreakfast , samherschelwein.com . "Natu...

Derrick Austin is the author of Tenderness, forthcoming from BOA Editions in Fall 2021 , and Trouble the Water (BOA Editions). He is a 2019-2021 Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University. He currently lives in Oakland, CA. Twitter: @ParadiseLaust , Instagram: @ParadiseLaust "Is This or Is This True as Happiness" was previously published in Tin House. Text of today's poem and more details abo...

Shelley Wong is the author of As She Appears (YesYes Books, 2022), winner of the 2019 Pamet River Prize, and the chapbook RARE BIRDS (Diode Editions, 2017). Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, Kenyon Review, and The New Republic. She has received a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from MacDowell, Kundiman, and Vermont Studio Center. She is an affiliate artist at Headlands...

For Pride Month we are reinventing our regular podcast interview series as a new daily poetry podcast featuring poems written and read by contemporary queer poets. We intend this series as a sort of "literary Pride Parade"; a celebration of the vitality and variety of queer poetry today. Whether you're a poetry fan, a student or educator, or just curious, Queer Poem-a-Day will connect you to this...

Dr. Jason Oliver Chang is Associate Professor of History, as well as Asian and Asian American Studies at the University of Connecticut. We use Dr. Chang's zine "Unmasking Yellow Peril" (co-written with Turner Willman and the group 18 Million Rising ) as a jumping-off point for discussing the history and present of exclusion, discrimination, and violence against Asian Americans, as well as the fiel...

Stateway's Garden by our guest Jasmon Drain is a debut collection of linked short  stories that explore characters who live in and are shaped by the Chicago public housing project Stateway Gardens, which was torn down in 2007.  We discuss how a writer navigates the responsibility and expectations involved in writing about a real place. Jasmon also reveals the careful craft of weaving markers of ti...

The Loop: The "L" Tracks that Shaped and Saved Chicago  by our guest Patrick T. Reardon argues  that the rectangular loop of elevated train tracks in downtown Chicago is the single most important structure in Chicago's history. The Loop traces the development of the physical structure, but also the effect of the idea--bringing a diverse and divided city together in one concentrated, shared area of...

The Math Campers is Dan Chiasson's fifth book of poetry.  He is the poetry critic for The New Yorker , a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books , and teaches English at Wellesley College.  You can checkout The Math Campers at the Deerfield Public Library, and find Dan Chiasson on Twitter @dchiasso .  The Math Campers has a thrilling and unique structure. Imagining a reader who narrat...

Intersectional Tech: Black Users in Digital Gaming (Louisiana State University Press) by Dr. Kishonna Gray documents and analyzes how the intersectional identities of race, gender, sexuality, and ability are experienced by black video gamers. Conversations about racial justice can sometimes overlook gaming and related social media, even though these activities make up a large part of many people's...

Our first Youth and Family episode--with the theme "Cool Careers!" Kary Henry, our School Outreach Coordinator, joins as co-host to share three interviews she conducted with a youth audience in mind.  First is Ashley Wolff , author and illustrator of many popular books, including Baby Bear Sees Blue and the beloved Miss Bindergarten series.  Then it's Peter L., a commercial airline pilot, who tell...

Troublemakers: Chicago Freedom Struggles through the Lens of Art Shay , by our guest Erik Gellman, fuses photography and history to explore many "movements and moments" in the struggle for a more free and democratic society in our city, from the post-war years through 1970.  Troublemakers use the photographs of acclaimed photographer, longtime Deerfield resident (and past DPL podcast guest ) Art S...