Join us for this virtual panel featuring award-winning poets Emily Carlson, Max Heinegg, and David O’Connell who will read and engage in a host-moderated Q & A about the writing process and their recently published books from Massachusetts independent literary presses. Emily Carlson’s Why Misread A Cloud (Tupelo Press 2022), the 2022 Sunken Garden Chapbook Poetry Award winner, bears witness to the psychological effects of war on daily rituals of life – both in Lebanon where she was studying poetry when the war began and, six years later, from her window in the historic Black neighborhood of Pittsburgh during the pre-dawn raids on a friend’s home by militarized police. Max Heinegg’s debut poetry collection Good Harbor (Lily Poetry Press), winner of the 2022 Paul Nemser Prize, writes poems rooted in New England and New York about parenting and teaching, navigating the rough waters of life to find safety in the harbors of home and community. In Our Best Defense (Červená Barva Press 2022), David O’Connell explores fatherhood and childhood, myth and history, rainforests, the blues of Robert Johnson. While the perils of our times–including climate change, school violence, and war–are never far from sight, these poems uncover ways to celebrate this moment, even as they acknowledge victory remains far from certain.

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