About this Event
Join us for a night of poetry with readings from three stellar writers!
Dr. Kelsey L. Smoot (he/they/Kelz) is a gender theorist, an elective Southerner, a writer, and a poet. His autoethnographic style has become the lens through which he understands and reflects on his experience navigating the US sociopolitical landscape. Currently, Kelz serves as an Assistant Managing Editor at Sundress Publications. They are the winner of the 2021 Sad Girls Club Spring Literary Contest, the 2023 The Good Life Review Honeybee Prize, and the Grand Prize Winner of the 2024 Button Poetry Video Contest. Kelz is a Tin House Workshop alum, a Pushcart Prize nominee, a Best of the Net nominee, and a Best New Poets nominee. Proudly, he is also the author of two chapbooks: we was bois together with CLASH! (An Imprint of Mouthfeel Press) and Muse, with Another New Calligraphy. Thrillingly, Kelz’s debut full-length collection of poems, SOULMATE AS A VERB arrives in early 2026 with DOPAMINE/Semiotext(e).
Alafia Nicole Sessions is a black poet, educator, actress, herbalist and birthworker. Alafia’s debut poetry collection, Nine Drops of Turpentine, was selected by Victoria Chang as the winner of the Georgia Poetry Prize, and will be published by University of Georgia Press in March 2027. Her poetry has been published in POETRY, Ploughshares, Poem-a-Day, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cincinnati Review, Ecopoetry Anthology, Southern Humanities Review, Indiana Review, Los Angeles Review, Obsidian and elsewhere. Alafia is the recipient of awards and fellowships from Cave Canem, Sustainable Arts Foundation, Yaddo and The Watering Hole. She is the winner of the Furious Flower Prize.
Chris Ketchum is from Moscow, Idaho. He received an MFA from Vanderbilt University and is a doctoral candidate at Georgia State University in Atlanta. He is an editor of Beyond Bars, a literary magazine that publishes poetry and prose by writers who have been impacted by incarceration. His poems have appeared in Best New Poets, Copper Nickel, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
1655 McLendon Ave NE, 1655 McLendon Avenue Northeast, Atlanta, United States
USD 0.00
