Join us for the Brooklyn Poets Friday Night Open, which begins with an open mic and culminates in readings by two featured poets. Our featured poets on November 3rd will be Matthew Gellman and Jade Yeung.
6:00 PM: open mic signup begins
6:30 to 7:45 PM: open mic
8 to 8:30 PM: featured readers
Each reader for the open mic can read for up to a four-minute set. Participants can purchase one of eight tickets in advance to reserve an open mic spot. Once those tickets sell out, all other participants who’d like to read for the open mic can purchase a ticket to sign up at the door on a first-come, first-serve basis. There will be time for about 16–18 readers.
Guests can purchase tickets to attend in person at 144 Montague Street or virtually via Zoom (note: virtual guests cannot read for the open mic). For in-person attendance, advance online ticket sales end at 5 PM on the day of the event. After that, tickets for in-person attendance can be purchased at the door until we reach capacity. Tickets for virtual attendance will be available until 6:30 PM. A Zoom link will be emailed to all ticket holders. Participants are encouraged to purchase tickets in advance for in-person attendance, as there are limited seats. Brooklyn Poets members take $5 off.
Note that by participating in the Friday Night Open, you agree to abide by our code of conduct and COVID-19 policy. We strongly encourage all attendees to wear masks (regardless of vaccination status) except readers at a safe distance on stage. 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 [email protected].
Featured Poets
Matthew Gellman is the author of Night Logic, selected by Denise Duhamel as the winner of Tupelo Press’s 2021 Snowbound Chapbook Award. His first full-length collection of poetry, Beforelight, was selected by Tina Chang as the winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize and is forthcoming from BOA Editions. A 2023–2024 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, Matthew has also received awards and honors from Brooklyn Poets, the Adroit Journal‘s Djanikian Scholars Program, the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Summer Writers Institute, and the Academy of American Poets. His poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Narrative, the Common, North American Review, Indiana Review, Ninth Letter, the Nashville Review, Lambda Literary’s Poetry Spotlight and other publications. Matthew holds an MFA from Columbia University and lives in New York, where he teaches at Hunter College and the Fashion Institute of Technology.
Jade Yeung is a Toishanese American writer and artist from Brooklyn, NY. They are the author of ANTI, a chapbook from Black Warrior Review. Jade was a 2023 Lambda Literary Fellow and Hedgebrook's Writer-in-Residence. They have received support from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Community of Writers, and the Fine Arts Work Center. Their work has appeared in Honey Literary, Queen Mob’s Teahouse and Kissing Dynamite. Jade received her MFA from Rutgers University–Newark, where she was a Trustee Fellow.