There will be workshops and readings as part of the Distinguished Poets Series on May 3, 2025, featuring Kwame Dawes and Maya C. Popa.
The Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College offers readings and workshops as part of its Distinguished Poets Series. The college is limiting the number of attendees for in-person events, so registration is required for workshops. Coffee, tea, and a light breakfast will be provided for workshop participants. You can check registration availability by emailing Cynthia Pagan at the Poetry Center. Workshops are available for a fee of $20. In-person workshops will be held at the Poetry Center in Paterson from 10 AM to 12 PM. Following their workshop, poets will give a reading that is always free and open to the public. These readings are recorded and archived for viewing on the Poetry Center’s YouTube channel.
Maya C. Popa is the author of two collections, Wound is the Origin of Wonder (W.W. Norton, 2022) named one of the Guardian’srecent best books of poetry, and American Faith (Sarabande, 2019), runner-up in the Kathryn A. Morton Prize judged by Ocean Vuong and winner of the North American Book Prize. Her poems and essays appear in The Atlantic, the Nation, Poetry, the Paris Review, the Times Literary Supplement and elsewhere. She holds a PhD on the role of wonder in poetry from Goldsmiths, University of London, where she was a recipient of the English department bursary for exceptional merit. She was previously a Clarendon Scholar at Oxford University, where she earned her MA, and is a Veterans Fellows at NYU, where she earned her MFA. Her newsletter, Poetry Today, is one of Substack’s best-selling featured publications. Since 2018, she has served as the Poetry Editor of Publishers Weekly and Director of Creative Writing at the Nightingale-Bamford School. She teaches advanced poetry at NYU.
Kwame Dawes is the author of numerous books of poetry and other books of fiction, criticism, and essays. His most recent collection is Sturge Town (Peepal Tree Press, UK 2023). Dawes is a George W. Holmes University Professor of English and Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner. He teaches in the Pacific MFA Program and is the Series Editor of the African Poetry Book Series, Director of the African Poetry Book Fund, and Artistic Director of the Calabash International Literary Festival. He is a Chancellor for the Academy of American Poets and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Dawes is the winner of the prestigious Windham/Campbell Award for Poetry and was a finalist for the 2022 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. In 2022, Dawes was awarded the Order of Distinction Commander class by the Government of Jamaica. He is the Poet Laureate of Jamaica (2024-2027).
Maria Mazziotti Gillan's newest poetry collection is When the Stars Were Still Visible (2021). Other recent publications are the poetry and photography collection, Paterson Light and Shadow, and the poetry collections What Blooms in Winter and The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets, a pairing of her poems with her paintings.
Maria's artist website is MariaMazziottiGillan.com and her poetry website is MariaGillan.com.
