COUPLET is a quarterly reading series, produced, curated and hosted by poet Leah Umansky since 2011, featuring both emerging and established poets. COUPLET is co-hosted by The Red Room. *This will be BOTH an in-person event and live-streaming event when readers both in-person and on zoom!*
Virginia Konchan (zoom) is the author of four poetry collections, including Bel Canto (Carnegie Mellon, 2022) and Hallelujah Time (Véhicule Press, 2021), and a short story collection, Anatomical Gift. Coeditor of Marbles on the Floor: How to Assemble a Book of Poems (University of Akron Press, 2023), her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Yale Review, and The Believer.
Zeina Hashem Beck (zoom) is a Lebanese poet. Her third full-length poetry collection, O, has been recently released by Penguin Books in July 2022. Her collection Louder than Hearts won the 2016 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, The New York Times, Poetry, Ploughshares, World Literature Today, the Academy of American Poets, and elsewhere. After a lifetime in Lebanon and a decade in Dubai, Zeina recently moved to California. www.zeinahashembeck.com
Maria Mazziotti Gillan (zoom) is winner of the 2014 George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature from AWP, the 2011 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers, and the 2008 American Book Award for her book, All That Lies Between Us. She is the Founder/Executive Director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College, editor of the Paterson Literary Review, and Professor Emerita in creative writing at Binghamton University—SUNY. She has published 23 books, including her latest book, When the Stars Were Visible (Stephen F. Austin University Press, April, 2021). Visit her website at www.mariagillan.com
Nkosi Nkululeko work is published in ANMLY, Chess Life Online, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Oxford Poetry, The Nation, Poetry Northwest, and more. He is anthologized in the Best American Poetry 2018, Bettering American Vol. 3, and Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry. Nkosi is a poetry, music, and chess instructor from Harlem!
Megan Fernandes has been published in The New Yorker, the American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, The Common, The Boston Review, among many others. Her most recent book of poetry GOOD BOYS was published in 2020 with Tin House and her forthcoming book, also with Tin House, is called I DO EVERYTHING I'M TOLD and will be published in Summer 2023.
Nathan McClain is the author of two collections of poetry -- Previously Owned (2022) and Scale (2017) -- both from Four Way Books. A Cave Canem fellow, he teaches at Hampshire College and serves as poetry editor of the Massachusetts Review.