On Saturday, April 5, 2025, Paterson Poetry Prize 2024 Winner Afaa M. Weaver will give a reading at the Poetry Center at PCCC in Paterson, NJ.
Afaa will also conduct a poetry workshop in the morning before his reading. Workshop registration is required along with a $20 fee. Registration information is available at poetrycenterpccc.com/workshops. Check on registration availability by emailing Cynthia Pagan at the Poetry Center.
Afaa M. Weaver's poetry collection, A Fire in the Hills (Red Hen Press, Pasadena, CA) was selected by Maria Gillan who said, "Afaa M. Weaver’s book, sparks a fire in the heart. Weaver has been writing heart-wrenching, honest poems, and this book continues his tradition of making music out of sorrow and pain and finding the sweetness hidden within our daily lives.”
Afaa M. Weaver’s most recent collection of poetry is A Fire in the Hills. His awards include the Wallace Stevens, Kingsley Tufts, and St. Botolph’s 2019 Distinguished Artist, as well as medals from the Beijing Writers Association, and Taiwan’s Artists and Writers Association. Afaa is a Guggenheim fellow, a Chancellor at the Academy of American Poets, a professor emeritus at Simmons University, and guest MFA faculty at Sarah Lawrence College. His papers are held in the Howard Gotlieb Center at Boston University. With his wife Kristen Skedgell, Afaa lives in the mid-Hudson Valley of New York.
The co-winner of the prize in 2024 is Mahogany L. Browne, who is unable to attend this event.
She is a Kennedy Center’s Next 50 fellow, is a writer, playwright, organizer, & educator. Browne received fellowships from All Arts, Arts for Justice, Air Serenbe, Baldwin for the Arts, Cave Canem, Hawthornden, Poets House, Mellon Research, Rauschenberg, Wesleyan University, & UCross. Browne’s books include Vinyl Moon, Chlorine Sky (optioned for a play by Steppenwolf Theater), Black Girl Magic, and banned books Woke: A Young Poet’s Call to Justice and Woke Baby. Founder of the diverse lit initiative Woke Baby Book Fair, Browne currently tours Chrome Valley (highlighted in Publishers Weekly and The New York Times) and is the 2024 Paterson Poetry Prize winner. She holds an honorary Doctor of Philosophy degree awarded by Marymount Manhattan College in 2024, is the inaugural poet-in-residence at Lincoln Center, and is at work on her first adult fiction and fourth YA novel-in-verse in Brooklyn, NY.
She is a Kennedy Center’s Next 50 fellow, is a writer, playwright, organizer, & educator. Browne received fellowships from All Arts, Arts for Justice, Air Serenbe, Baldwin for the Arts, Cave Canem, Hawthornden, Poets House, Mellon Research, Rauschenberg, Wesleyan University, & UCross. Browne’s books include Vinyl Moon, Chlorine Sky (optioned for a play by Steppenwolf Theater), Black Girl Magic, and banned books Woke: A Young Poet’s Call to Justice and Woke Baby. Founder of the diverse lit initiative Woke Baby Book Fair, Browne currently tours Chrome Valley (highlighted in Publishers Weekly and The New York Times) and is the 2024 Paterson Poetry Prize winner. She holds an honorary Doctor of Philosophy degree awarded by Marymount Manhattan College in 2024, is the inaugural poet-in-residence at Lincoln Center, and is at work on her first adult fiction and fourth YA novel-in-verse in Brooklyn, NY.
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.
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