COUPLET is a quarterly reading series, produced, curated + hosted by poet Leah Umansky, since 2011. It is held in the East Village at The Red Room, + features both emerging + established poets. Every event features music and an after-party. Please note that this event is held in a historical building and sadly does not have handicap accessibility.
Six readers: Anastasica Renee, Sean Singer, John Gallagher, Oliver de la Paz, Ocean Vuong, and Marie Howe.
Marie Howe is the author of five volumes of poetry, New and Selected Poems; Magdalene: Poems; The Kingdom of Ordinary Time; The Good Thief; and What the Living Do, and she is the co-editor of a book of essays, In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, Agni, Ploughshares, Harvard Review, and The Partisan Review, among others. She has been a fellow at the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College and a recipient of NEA and Guggenheim fellowships, and Stanley Kunitz selected Howe for a Lavan Younger Poets Prize from the American Academy of Poets. In 2015, she received the Academy of American Poets Poetry Fellowship which recognizes distinguished poetic achievement. From 2012-2014, she served as the Poet Laureate of New York State.
Oliver de la Paz is the author and editor of seven books. His latest collection of poetry, The Diaspora Sonnets, was be published by Liveright Press (2023). In 2023 he was appointed as the Poet Laureate of Worcester, MA. He is a founding member of Kundiman and he teaches at the College of the Holy Cross and in the Low-Residency MFA Program at PLU.
Sean Singer is the author of Discography (Yale University Press, 2002), winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, selected by W.S. Merwin, and the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America; Honey & Smoke (Eyewear Publishing, 2015); and Today in the Taxi (Tupelo Press, 2022) which won the 2022 National Jewish Book award. He runs a manuscript consultation service at www.seansingerpoetry.com
Anastacia-Reneé (She/They) is a queer writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist and, speaker. She is the author of (v.), Forget It, and Sidenotes from the Archivist. Here in the (Middle) of Nowhere is forthcoming in March 2024. Side Notes From The Archivist was selected as one of “NYPL Best Books of 2023” as well as the American Library Association’s “Notable Books of 2024 (Poetry)” Her multi-genre work has been published and anthologized widely.
John Gallaher is the author of some books of poetry, some with others, including GC Waldrep and Kristina Marie Darling, some edited books, one with Mary Biddinger, and most recently, My Life in Brutalist Architecture, poetry from Four Way Books 2024, about family and adoption. JG is co-editor of the Laurel Review.
Ocean Vuong is the author of The New York Times bestselling poetry collection, Time is a Mother (Penguin Press 2022), and The New York Times bestselling novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin Press 2019), which has been translated into 41 languages. A recipient of a 2019 MacArthur "Genius" Grant, he is also the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, a New York Times Top 10 Book of 2016, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Whiting Award, the Thom Gunn Award, and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. He currently serves as a tenured Professor in the NYU MFA program in Creative Writing.