Brooklyn Poets Reading Series

Join us for our next Brooklyn Poets Reading Series event at 144 Montague on Friday, February 16, featuring poets Sarah Ghazal Ali, V. Penelope Pelizzon and Diana Khoi Nguyen! Free and open to the public, the event will also be livestreamed via Zoom. Wine reception for in-person attendees will begin at 6 PM and readings will begin at 7. Book signing to follow.

Advance online ticketing for in-person guests will end at 5 PM on the day of the event. After that, in-person guests will be admitted at the door until we reach capacity. In-person guests are encouraged to get a ticket in advance, as space is limited. Virtual tickets will be available until start time at 7 PM (ET). A Zoom link will be emailed to all ticket holders.

Closed captions for the event will be available via Zoom. To request additional accommodations or more information, please contact us. Note that by attending the Brooklyn Poets Reading Series, you agree to abide by our code of conduct and COVID-19 policy below. Effective January 8, 2024, all event attendees except readers at a safe distance on stage are required to wear masks due to the current rise in cases in NYC. Our full policy can be found at the end of the event description. Brooklyn Poets reserves the right to dismiss from our programs any participant found to be in violation of these policies. Thank you for respecting our community.

Featured Poets

Sarah Ghazal Ali is the author of Theophanies, selected as the Editors' Choice for the 2022 Alice James Award. A Djanikian Scholar and winner of the Sewanee Review Poetry Prize, she has published her poems in American Poetry Review, the Kenyon Review, Poem-a-Day, Guernica and elsewhere. A former Stadler Fellow, Sarah has received fellowships and residencies from Tin House, the Stadler Center for Poetry and Literary Arts, the Hambidge Center, the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Community of Writers, and others. She is the poetry editor for West Branch and an incoming assistant professor of English at Macalester College.

V. Penelope Pelizzon’s third book of poems, A Gaze Hound that Hunteth by the Eye (Pitt Poetry Series, 2024) is a LitHub recommendation for 2024. Her first book, Nostos, won the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award; her second, Whose Flesh Is Flame, Whose Bone Is Time, was a finalist for the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize. She is also the coauthor of Tabloid, Inc., a critical study of film, photography and crime narratives. Her recognitions include a Hawthornden Fellowship, the Amy Lowell Traveling Scholarship, a Lannan Foundation Writing Residency Fellowship and a “Discovery”/The Nation Award.

A poet and multimedia artist, Diana Khoi Nguyen is the author of Root Fractures (2024) and Ghost Of (2018), which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her video work has been exhibited at the Miller ICA. Nguyen is a MacDowell and Kundiman fellow and a member of the Vietnamese artist collective She Who Has No Master(s). She's received an NEA fellowship and awards from the 92Y "Discovery" Poetry and 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery contests. She teaches in the Randolph College Low-Residency MFA program and is an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

COVID-19 Policy

Effective January 8, 2024, all event attendees are required to wear masks due to the current rise in cases in NYC. Masks will be available at the door.

We are implementing this change because, according to the latest data, we are in the second-largest surge in cases of the pandemic. The current metrics available, including NYC wastewater data and the CDC’s Respiratory Virus Activity Levels, both indicate very high levels of COVID and other illnesses that continue to increase.

While your personal risk tolerance may vary, the unmitigated spread of COVID disproportionately affects the most vulnerable in our community—including those who are immunocompromised or don’t have the privilege of taking paid sick days to heal and recover. We hope you’ll join us in taking the actions we can to make our space welcoming to all and to keep each other safe. Please stay home if you are experiencing symptoms, have a positive COVID test or someone close to you has recently tested positive.

While we do our best, Brooklyn Poets cannot guarantee zero risk. A risk of exposure to COVID-19 exists in all public settings. By entering the building, students, teachers and other attendees accept the risk of exposure and knowingly waive and release Brooklyn Poets from any liability related to COVID-19.

Brooklyn Poets Code of Conduct

Brooklyn Poets will not tolerate any instances of discrimination, harassment or abuse in conjunction with any of our programs. Respect and consideration for others, both within and outside our programs, are core values to be upheld by all participants. Discrimination against and/or harassment of community members on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, disability, national origin, religion, age, marital status, veteran status or any other factor is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. Program participants are expected to adhere to all federal, state and local laws and regulations. Should a board or staff member, independent contractor, volunteer or program participant be found to violate any aspect of the organization’s code of conduct, Brooklyn Poets reserves the right to dismiss them from the program. Consequences may include, but not be limited to, dismissal from the current activity, suspension, ineligibility for all future activities, and/or loss of payment or fees. If you have any issues to report, please do not hesitate to contact Executive Director Jason Koo (koo@brooklynpoets.org) or Deputy Director renée kay (kay@brooklynpoets.org), and they will get back to you as soon as possible.