Join us for an in-person afternoon with award-winning poets Anna VQ Ross and Jason Tandon who will read and engage in a Q & A about their inspirations and craft.
Anna VQ Ross reads from her most recent poetry collection Flutter, Kick (Red Hen Press: November, 2022 and winner of the 2020 Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award), for which poet and Award Judge Jeffrey Harrison wrote, “ Ross focuses her sharp description, taut lyricism, and vigilant gaze at the world around her with a kind of double-attentiveness, attuned to the beauties and pleasures of everyday life, nature, and motherhood while remaining acutely aware that danger, tragedy, or loss can intrude at any moment—‘not if, but when.’ …This dark knowledge is both a burden and—especially after the speaker learns to ‘give up fear’—a blessing that deepens the many moments of joy and human connection that this book offers.”
Ross’s previous collections include If a Storm (Anhinga Press, winner of the Robert Dana-Anhinga Prize for Poetry); Figuring (Bull City Press); and Hawk Weather (winner the New Women’s Voices Prize from Finishing Line Press and the Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award from the New England Poetry Society).
A recipient of fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Fulbright Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Vermont Studio Center, her recent work appears in Kenyon Review, Harvard Review, The Nation, The Missouri Review, Poetry Northwest, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. She is poetry editor for Salamander Magazine and teaches at Tufts University and through the Emerson Prison Initiative. Anna lives with her family in Dorchester, where she runs the poetry and music series Unearthed Song & Poetry and raises chickens. https://www.annavqross.com/
Jason Tandon reads from his fifth full-length poetry book, This Far North (Black Lawrence Press, March, 2023), for which he has been praised by poet Eric Pankey as “a minimalist, a poet who manages stunning effects using the fewest possible elements of his medium… The intelligence in these poems is razor-sharp, lean, and efficient; the kind spirit behind them is generous and immense.”
Tandon’s other collections include The Actual World, Quality of Life, and Give Over the Heckler and Everyone Gets Hurt, winner of the St. Lawrence Book Award from Black Lawrence Press.
His poems have appeared in many journals and magazines, including Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Barrow Street, North American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Esquire, AGNI Online, Passages North, Poetry East, Poetry International, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Tar River Poetry. His poems have also been featured on NPR and on Verse Daily.
Born in Hartford, CT, he earned a B.A. and M.A. in English from Middlebury College and an M.F.A. from the University of New Hampshire, where he studied with Charles Simic. Tandon is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Arts & Sciences Writing Program at Boston University and lives with his family west of Boston. https://jasontandon.com/bio/
This event is sponsored by the Friends of the Concord Free Public Library.
