Join us for our next Brooklyn Poets Reading Series event at 144 Montague on Friday, November 8th, featuring poets Christopher Rey Pérez, Ruth Awad and Danez Smith! 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.

Note that by attending the Brooklyn Poets Reading Series, you agree to abide by our code of conduct and COVID-19 policy below. All in-person attendees for events are currently required to wear masks (regardless of vaccination status) except readers at a safe distance on stage. We will have masks available. 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.

Closed captions will be available for the event through the Zoom livestream. For more information and to request additional accommodations, contact us at bkp@brooklynpoets.org.

Featured Poets

Christopher Rey Pérez is a poet from the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. His first book gauguin’s notebook (Northwestern University Press, 2017) received the 2015 Madeleine P. Plonsker Prize from Lake Forest College. He is also the author of Fayuca, a book on markets and movement, with diSONARE Editorial in Mexico City, and Future Tourism, a chapbook with Sputnik & Fizzle on love, travel, and class.

Ruth Awad is a Lebanese American poet, a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellow, and the author of Outside the Joy (Third Man Books, 2024), and Set to Music a Wildfire (Southern Indiana Review Press, 2017) winner of the 2016 Michael Waters Poetry Prize and the 2018 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. Alongside Rachel Mennies, she is the co-editor of The Familiar Wild: On Dogs & Poetry (Sundress Publications, 2020). She is the recipient of a 2020 and 2016 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award. Her work appears in the Atlantic, Poetry, Poem-a-Day, AGNI, the Believer, New Republic, Kenyon Review, Pleiades, Missouri Review, the Rumpus, and elsewhere. She lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Danez Smith is the author of four collections including Don’t Call Us Dead, Homie and, most recently, Bluff. They are also the curator of Blues In Stereo: The Early Works of Langston Hughes. Danez has won the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry, the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and they have been a finalist for the NAACP Image Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award. Danez lives in the Twin Cities with their people and teaches at the Randolph College MFA program and the Black Youth Healing Arts Center in St. Paul, MN.

COVID-19 Policy

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

The current metrics available, including NYC wastewater data and the CDC’s Respiratory Virus Activity Levels, both indicate high levels of COVID and other illnesses. While your personal risk tolerance may vary, the unmitigated spread of COVID and other respiratory illnesses disproportionately affects the most vulnerable in our community—including those who are immunocompromised or don’t have the privilege of 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.

We strongly encourage daytime visitors and workshop attendees to wear masks. Workshop instructors may choose to enforce a more stringent policy at their own discretion. Additionally, workshop participants may be required to wear masks as an accessibility accommodation for other participants.

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 anyone on our Conduct Committee and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.

Interim Director r kay: kay@brooklynpoets.org
Board Director Emily Blair: emiblair@gmail.com
Board Director Miller Oberman: miller.oberman@gmail.com