Poetry Reading and Workshop with Leah Umansky June 6

On Saturday, June 6, 2026, poet Leah Umansky will conduct a virtual workshop followed by a reading as part of the Poetry Center at PCCC's Distinguished Poets Series. Virtual workshops via Zoom will run from 1 PM – 2:30 PM (ET), followed by the poet’s reading from 2:30 PM – 3 PM (ET).

Leah Umansky is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently, OF TYRANT (Word Works Books 2024). She earned her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and has curated and hosted The COUPLET Reading Series in NYC since 2011. She is the creator of the STAY BRAVE Substack, which encourages women-identifying creatives to inspire other women-identifying creatives to stay brave in their creative pursuits. Her creative work has been featured on PBS and The Slowdown podcast, and in such places as The New York Times, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, The Nation, Poetry magazine, Bennington Review, and American Poetry Review. 

Leah is an educator and writing coach who has taught workshops for all ages at venues such as The New York Public Library, The Guggenheim, Poets House, Memorial Sloan Kettering, and elsewhere. Her fourth collection of poems, ORDINARY SPLENDOR, is about wonder, joy, and love. She can be found at leahumansky.com

Registration is required for all workshops with a fee of $20. Please check registration availability by emailing Cynthia Pagan at the Poetry Center. 

Poetry Center readings are always free and open to the public and are recorded and archived later for viewing on the Poetry Center’s YouTube channel.

The Poetry Center offers poetry writing workshops in-person and virtually in conjunction with the Distinguished Poets Reading Series. Over the years, distinguished poets have included poet laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, Inaugural poets and others of national and international reputation, such as Allen Ginsberg, William Stafford, Amiri Baraka, Lucille Clifton, Stanley Kunitz, Billy Collins, Marge Piercy, Mark Doty, Marie Howe, Kim Addonizio, Billy Collins, Dorianne Laux, Jan Beatty, Robert Sward, Patricia Smith, Martín Espada, Toi Derricotte and Richard Blanco.

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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.

June 13 José Antonio Rodríguez Virtual Reading and Workshop

The featured poet for the June 13, 2026 Distinguished Poets Series at the Poetry Center at PCCC will be José Antonio Rodríguez. This will be a virtual reading and workshop.

José Antonio Rodríguez is the author of four poetry collections, the most recent of which are This American Autopsy, cited as “new and noteworthy” by The New York Times, and The Day’s Hard Edge. He’s also the author of the memoir House Built on Ashes, shortlisted for the PEN America Los Angeles Award and the Lambda Literary Award. His poems have been published widely, including in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, The New Republic, The Missouri Review, and Paterson Literary Review. His work has been anthologized most recently in Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology, A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker: 1925-2025, How to Get Home in the Dark: Poems on Mental Health and Healing, and the fifteenth edition of The Norton Introduction to Literature. He holds degrees in Biology and Theatre Arts and a Ph.D. in English from Binghamton University. He is a gay Mexican immigrant and first-generation high school and college graduate who teaches writing and literary translation in the M.F.A. program at The University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley. Learn more about him at jarodriguez.org 

Registration is required for all workshops with a fee of $20. Please check registration availability by emailing Cynthia Pagan at the Poetry Center. 

Poetry Center readings are always free and open to the public and are recorded and archived later for viewing on the Poetry Center’s YouTube channel.

The Poetry Center offers poetry writing workshops in-person and virtually in conjunction with the Distinguished Poets Reading Series. Over the years, distinguished poets have included poet laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, Inaugural poets and others of national and international reputation, such as Allen Ginsberg, William Stafford, Amiri Baraka, Lucille Clifton, Stanley Kunitz, Billy Collins, Marge Piercy, Mark Doty, Marie Howe, Kim Addonizio, Billy Collins, Dorianne Laux, Jan Beatty, Robert Sward, Patricia Smith, Martín Espada, Toi Derricotte and Richard Blanco.

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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.

Jim Reese: Virtual Poetry Reading and Workshop May 30

Jim Reese is an associate professor of English and director of the Great Plains Writers’ Tour at Mount Marty University in Yankton, South Dakota. He spent fourteen years in residency for the National Endowment for the Arts’ interagency initiative with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, where he established Yankton Federal Prison Camp’s first creative writing and publishing workshop. He is the author of eight books, including the nonfiction collection Bone Chalk, and has received several awards for his writing and public service. 

On Saturday, May 30, 2026, Reese will conduct a virtual workshop followed by a reading as part of the Poetry Center at PCCC's Distinguished Poets Series. The workshop via Zoom will run from 1 PM – 2:30 PM (EST) and be followed by the poet’s reading from 2:30 PM – 3 PM (ET).  Registration is required for all workshops with a fee of $20. ​Please check registration availability by emailing Cynthia Pagan at the Poetry Center.

Poetry Center readings are always free and open to the public. Poetry Center readings are recorded and archived later for viewing on the Poetry Center’s YouTube channel.

Link to the live and later archived reading on the Poetry Center YouTube Channel

The Poetry Center offers poetry writing workshops in-person and virtually in conjunction with the Distinguished Poets Reading Series. Over the years, distinguished poets have included poet laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, Inaugural poets and others of national and international reputation, such as Allen Ginsberg, William Stafford, Amiri Baraka, Lucille Clifton, Stanley Kunitz, Billy Collins, Marge Piercy, Mark Doty, Marie Howe, Kim Addonizio, Billy Collins, Dorianne Laux, Jan Beatty, Robert Sward, Patricia Smith, Martín Espada, Toi Derricotte and Richard Blanco.

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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.

June 6 Leah Umansky Virtual Poetry Workshop and Reading

On Saturday, June 6, 2026, poet Leah Umansky will conduct a virtual workshop followed by a reading as part of the Poetry Center at PCCC's Distinguished Poets Series. Virtual workshops via Zoom will run from 1 PM – 2:30 PM (ET), followed by the poet’s reading from 2:30 PM – 3 PM (ET).

Registration is required for all workshops with a fee of $20. Please check registration availability by emailing Cynthia Pagan at the Poetry Center. 

Poetry Center readings are always free and open to the public and are recorded and archived later for viewing on the Poetry Center’s YouTube channel.

The Poetry Center offers poetry writing workshops in-person and virtually in conjunction with the Distinguished Poets Reading Series. Over the years, distinguished poets have included poet laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, Inaugural poets and others of national and international reputation, such as Allen Ginsberg, William Stafford, Amiri Baraka, Lucille Clifton, Stanley Kunitz, Billy Collins, Marge Piercy, Mark Doty, Marie Howe, Kim Addonizio, Billy Collins, Dorianne Laux, Jan Beatty, Robert Sward, Patricia Smith, Martín Espada, Toi Derricotte and Richard Blanco.

Leah Umansky is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently, OF TYRANT (Word Works Books 2024.) She earned her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and has curated and hosted The COUPLET Reading Series in NYC since 2011. She is the creator of the STAY BRAVE Substack, which encourages women-identifying creatives to inspire other women-identifying creatives to stay brave in their creative pursuits. Her creative work has been featured on PBS and The Slowdown podcast, and in such places as The New York Times, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, The Nation, Poetry magazine, Bennington Review, and American Poetry Review. 

Leah is an educator and writing coach who has taught workshops for all ages at venues such as The New York Public Library, The Guggenheim, Poets House, Memorial Sloan Kettering, and elsewhere. Her fourth collection of poems, ORDINARY SPLENDOR, is about wonder, joy, and love. She can be found at leahumansky.com

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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.