Join us at Poets House or tune in for a virtual reading with Diane Seuss and Leah Umansky, reading from their newest collections, Modern Poetry (Graywolf Press, 2024) and Of Tyrant (Word Works Books, 2024). In poems and in conversation, Seuss and Umansky consider poetic and political authority from the academy to the office. It will be an indispensable conversation on the role of the poet in the public forum from two poets testing the bounds of their practice.
Diane Seuss will read virtually, and Leah Umansky will read in-person. Please RSVP below and check the page on September 11 for a Zoom link.
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About the Poets:
Diane Seuss’s most recent collection is Modern Poetry. frank: sonnets (Graywolf Press, 2021) was the winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. Four-Legged Girl (Graywolf Press, 2015) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Seuss was a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow. She received the John Updike Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2021. She was recently elected to the Academy of American Poets Board of Chancellors. Seuss was raised by a single mother in rural Michigan, which she continues to call home. (Photo by Gabrielle Montesanti).
Leah Umansky is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently, Of Tyrant. 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 can be found in such places as PBS, The New York Times, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A Day, USA Today, Poetry, and American Poetry Review. She is a writing coach who has taught workshops to all ages at such places as Poetry School London, Poets House, Hudson Valley Writers Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering and elsewhere. She is working on a fourth collection of poems, Ordinary Splendor, on wonder, joy and love. She can be found at www.leahumansky.com or @leah.umansky on Instagram.