Distinguished Poets Series Features Nicole Cooley and Meghan O’Rourke March 1

The Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College offers readings as part of its Distinguished Poets Series. The college is limiting the number of attendees for in-person events, so registration is required for in-person 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 whether in-person or virtual are offered for a fee of $20. Workshops 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)  In-person workshops will be held at the Poetry Center in Paterson from 10 AM – 12  PM

Following their workshop, poets will give a reading which is always free and open to the public. These readings are recorded and archived for viewing on the Poetry Center’s YouTube channel.

Directions and parking information for the Poetry Center 

3/1/2025 Nicole Cooley & Meghan O’Rourke

Nicole Cooley grew up in New Orleans and is the author of seven books of poems, most recently MOTHER WATER ASH (Louisiana State University Press 2024), as well as OF MARRIAGE (Alice James Books 2018),  GIRL AFTER GIRL AFTER GIRL (LSU Press 2017), BREACH (LSU Press 2010), and other collections. She has also published two chapbooks and a novel. She has received The Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, and the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America.  She teaches in the MFA program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College, City University of New York, and lives in New Jersey with her family.

Meghan O’Rourke, award-winning poet, nonfiction writer, and acclaimed editor, is the author of the poetry collections Sun In Days, Once, and Halflife, and the memoirs The Invisible Kingdom and The Long Goodbye. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes, and the inaugural May Sarton Poetry Prize, among her many other awards. Meghan writes for The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and is the editor of The Yale Review. She is a graduate of Yale University, where she also teaches.

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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.