April 25 Book Launch and Reading for the Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award

April 25, 2026 Book Launch and Reading
for the Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award

Join the Laura Boss Poetry Foundation and The Poetry Center in celebrating the publication launch of the winning book for the 2025 Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award with a reading by the winning poet and some finalists. Maria Mazziotti Gillan is a board member of the Foundation.

The 2025 winner is Terry Rae Hall for her collection Neither Are Crows. The final judge was Joe Weil. Her collection is published by NYQ Books. This award includes a $5,000 prize, 25 author copies, and today’s featured reading. Terry is the author of the chapbook The Something We Make from Nothing (Seven Kitchens Press, 2024). Other recent publications include Cider Press Review, San Pedro River Review, Pine Row Press, and Litmosphere.

Also scheduled to read are two of the five finalists: Mary Paulson, reading from Telling, and Michael Montlack, reading from Cosmic Idiot.

Mary Paulson’s poetry has appeared in a range of publications, including Sparks of Calliope, The Pomegranate London, Vita Brevis’ Poetry Anthology IV, Hares Paw, VAINE Magazine, Cathexis Northwest Press, Fevers of the Mind, The Gyroscope Review, The Metaworker Literary Magazine, Slow Trains, Mainstreet Rag, Painted Bride Quarterly, Nerve Cowboy, Arkana, Thimble Lit Magazine, and Tipton Poetry Journal. Her debut chapbook, Paint the Window Open, was published by Kelsey Publishing in 2021. She lives in Naples, Florida.

Michael Montlack is editor of the Lambda Finalist essay anthology My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them (University of Wisconsin Press) and author of the poetry collections Cool Limbo (NYQ Books) and Daddy (NYQ Books) and three chapbooks. His poems have appeared in Poetry Daily, Prairie Schooner, North American Review, Barrelhouse, The Cincinnati Review, Poet Lore, and Phoebe. He lives in NYC and teaches at NYU and CUNY City College. His finalist manuscript, Cosmic idiot, is forthcoming from Saturnalia.

Finalists unable to attend the reading: Daniel Donaghy, Rowhome in Flickering Light;  Kelleen Zubick, Bird Mnemonic; Sarah Anne Stinnett, The Hard Problem.

Daniel Donaghy is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Somerset, co-winner of the 2019 Paterson Poetry Prize. His previous poetry collections are Start with the Trouble, winner of the University of Arkansas Poetry Prize, and Streetfighting. He earned a BA in English from Kutztown University, an MA in English/Creative Writing from Hollins College, an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Cornell University, and a PhD in English from the University of Rochester. Donaghy has received the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, the Auburn Witness Poetry Prize, the Theodore Christian Hoepfner Literary Award, and two Connecticut Office of the Arts Artist Fellowships. He is a Professor of English and the 2023 University Distinguished Professor at Eastern Connecticut State University, where he edits Here: a poetry journal with his students.

Kelleen Zubick's work appears in Kenyon Review, Mississippi Review, Agni Online, Barrow Street, december, Dogwood, Many Mountains Moving, The Seattle Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Antioch Review, and Willow Springs. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Arizona State University and has been awarded artist residencies from the Anderson Center and from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. Kelleen lives in Denver and works for the national No Kid Hungry campaign.

Sarah Anne Stinnett is a Boston-based writer and educator. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University and an ALM in Dramatic Arts and ALB in Humanities from Harvard University. Her poetry appears in Plume, Booth, Palette Poetry, Mom Egg Review, On the Seawall, Chicago Quarterly Review, Tar River Poetry, and elsewhere.

All are invited for a luncheon at noon, with the readings to follow starting at 1 pm.

See laurabosspoetryfoundation.org for information on all the finalists, the Foundation’s work, and the manuscript award.

Information all all readings at The Poetry Center at PCCC 

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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.

Celebrating Poetry Month in Clifton with Maria Gillan April 23

On Thursday, April 23, 2026, from 2-4 pm, the FRIENDS of the Clifton Library are pleased to celebrate National Poetry Month with a reading by local poets. The featured poets are Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Jim Gwyn, Fran Lombardi-Grahl, and Jacqueline Wooten-Rose.

An open reading follows the featured poets. All poems should be for a general audience, and poets will be limited to one poem, two pages maximum. Free admission. Poets and poetry-lovers, please join us at Clifton Main Memorial Library, 292 Piaget Avenue, Clifton, NJ 07011.

MARIA MAZZIOTTI GILLAN, whose most recent publications include When the Stars Were Still Visible (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2021) and the poetry and photography collaboration with Mark Hillringhouse, Paterson Light and Shadow (Serving House Books, 2017,) is the author of 24 books.  She received the 2008 American Book Award for All That Lies Between Us (Guernica Editions). Ms. Gillan is the Editor Emerita of The Paterson Literary Review and Executive Director Emerita of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, New Jersey. She founded The Poetry Center in 1980. She is also Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing at Binghamton University-SUNY. JIM GWYN has been published in numerous anthologies and magazines. Recent work is in The Paterson Literary Review, Lips, The Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow, and Seventh Quarry. He won first prize in the 2008 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards and he has eight Pushcart Prize nominations. Jim also is the Editor of poetry journal Lips . FRANCES LOMBARDI-GRAHL teaches English as a Second Language in Paterson, NJ. She is a first prize co-winner in the 2026 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards and has been published in The Paterson Literary Review, Lips, The Red Wheelbarrow, and other journals. In addition, her chapbook “My Mother’s Hands” was published in 2019 by Feral Press. JACQUELINE WOOTEN-ROSE is a retired social worker and teacher, a tireless advocate for children, families, the elderly, and the homeless. Since grammar school she has been a passionate author of poems and stories. Her poem "America's Treasures" has received national recognition by the Poetry and Literature Center of the National Library of Congress.

Poem: In Third Grade I Fell in Love (With Commentary)

In Third Grade I Fell in Love

with language. The poems and stories, read aloud to us
in the dusty classrooms of PS 18 in Paterson, New Jersey,  
had a music that lifted me up above the scarred desks,
names and hearts carved into them
by generations of children, bored from the torture
of sitting still for hours.
 
For me, in my shy skin, the spaces in the school
meant for recess or gym were terrifying,
but inside the classroom, I loved
the books we read and the ones the teachers read to us.

At home, we spoke a southern Italian dialect
that brought Italy to 17th street.
But outside, I was in America.
though wary that I wasn't American enough.

In the classroom, I learned that English had a different kind of music,
one I could move to as if I were dancing.
I loved the poems that repeated themselves in my brain.
After I memorized a poem, I could carry it with me,
as though I had slipped it in my pocket
and could slip it out whenever I was alone and afraid.

My parents could not read to us in English,
but those teachers, all the ones I never thought to thank,
opened the door into a world far from my Italian family,
its aroma of tomato sauce bubbling on the stove,
of rosemary and mint growing outside the back door,
bread baking in the oven.

In books, I could find the way to leave the skin I was born in,
to enter the worlds that appeared on the very first page.

Maria Mazziotti Gillan

Was your poem, “In Third Grade I Fell in Love,” geared to a specific audience or for anyone who would listen?

Well, I hope when I write a poem that it is clear and direct enough to reach anyone who reads it. I was prompted out of my own need to explain my love of poetry written in English, particularly since I was an immigrant child who did not speak English when I went to school. I also wrote it in gratitude to all the teachers I never thanked for reading aloud to us in English and for making me hear the music of the language when it was spoken aloud. My own parents couldn’t speak English and couldn’t read to us in English, but those teachers gave me a gift that I can never repay. It’s only now, so many years later, that I wish I had written to them to thank them. Of course, now it’s too late. But wherever their spirits are, I hope they feel my love for them and my gratitude.

I hope this poem speaks to other people who also learned to love the way the language sounded when read aloud and learned to speak through writing when they couldn’t articulate what they felt inside to have conversations, as I could not, because I was so shy.

In the poem, you say that “The poems and stories read aloud to us in the dusty classroom of PS 18 in Paterson, New Jersey had a music that lifted me up above the scarred desks, names and hearts carved into them by generations of children bored with what, for many of them, must have been the torture of hours sitting still.” 

Could you say more about what you mean by “music” there? Is there a danger that fewer will hear that music today because of all the distractions around us, such as the constant temptation of social media?

When I say music, I mean that in a poem, there is a kind of interior music that carries you along— at least it’s music that I can hear. Certainly, Italian has its own kind of music because it is my first language. I will always love the sound of it; but English opened so many doors for me and led me to worlds I could not have imagined when I was a child. If you close your eyes and listen to a point where out loud, you hear a rhythm and a sound, it helps you to memorize the poem in order to carry it with you. For me, even when I revise poems, I have to read them out loud to hear when the sound falls flat. It helps me to revise the poem. I also find it helpful when working with my students to assist them with revisions, if I read the poem out loud so they can hear where it goes off.

There is a constant temptation today to spend so many hours on social media. I think it’s not just that we don’t listen to poetry being read out loud, but that we don’t read. I would suggest to students who are not particularly fond of reading that they might want to get audiobooks and listen to them in the car. The more you get to hear the language, the more it becomes a part of your body. The more it becomes a part of that instinctive place where poems come from, the more you will be changed by the writing and by what the writer is trying to tell you.

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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.

Paterson Poetry Prize Winners To Give Workshops and Readings Saturday April 11

The Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College is presenting on April 11, 2026, poetry workshops by the Paterson Poetry Prize Winners Joan Kwon Glass and Nancy Miller Gomez.

 

There are still seats open for workshops with either poet. Registration is required for workshops. Coffee, tea, and a light breakfast will be provided for workshop participants. You can confirm 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 at 1 pm. Poetry Center readings are always free and open to the public. These readings are recorded and archived for later viewing on the Poetry Center’s YouTube channel.

Full information on all the poets at Readings at The Poetry Center at PCCC

Directions and parking information for the Poetry Center 

Nancy Miller Gomez (she/her) is the author of Inconsolable Objects (YesYes Books), winner of the 2025 Paterson Poetry Prize, and Punishment (Rattle Chapbook Series). An Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow, her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, The Alaska Quarterly Review, The Adroit Journal, LitHub, Shenandoah, New Ohio Review, Rattle, Massachusetts Review, River Styx, Verse Daily, The Hopkins Review, and elsewhere. She received a special mention in the 2023 Pushcart Prize Anthology and was awarded a fellowship from the Jentel Foundation. Gomez co-founded an organization that provides writing workshops to incarcerated women and men and has taught poetry in Salinas Valley State Prison, the Santa Cruz County Jails, the Juvenile Hall, and as part of Cornell University’s Prison Education Program. She earned a B.A. from the University of California, San Diego, a J.D. from the University of San Diego, an MFA in Writing from Pacific University, and has worked as an attorney and a TV producer. Originally from Kansas, she now lives with her family in Northern California. As the Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz, she is working with the County Office of Education to provide poetry workshops to youth throughout the county.

 

Joan Kwon Glass is a diasporic, mixed-race, Korean American poet, author of the poetry collection DAUGHTER OF THREE GONE KINGDOMS (Perugia Press, 2024), which won the 2025 Paterson Poetry Prize and the Eric Hoffer Book Award for Poetry and was a finalist for the 2025 Balcones Poetry Prize. Her book, NIGHT SWIM, won the 2021 Diode Book Prize. Joan’s poems have been featured on NPR and in Poetry, The Slowdown, Poetry Daily, Passages North, Poetry Northwest, Korea Quarterly, Best American Poetry, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. She has been a featured reader at the Westchester Poetry Festival, the Boston Book Festival, and MASS Poetry and is a 2025 SWWIM writer in residence. Joan has served or is scheduled to serve as a visiting writer at Amherst College, Smith College, Wesleyan University, The New School, West Chester University, UCONN and elsewhere. She teaches workshops at Brooklyn Poets, Poets House, and Hudson Valley Writers Center and lives in Milford, CT.

 

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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.