Westchester Poetry Festival at The Masters School

HVWC & The Masters School proudly present The 9th Annual Westchester Poetry Festival, featuring Victoria Chang.

NB: this event is free and open to the public and takes place at Estherwood Mansion, The Masters School, Dobbs Ferry. Please register here to reserve your seat.

Victoria Chang (Barbie Chang), keynote reader, will be joined by Monica Farrell (You Darling Thing) Jennifer Franklin (No Small Gift), Meghan Plunkett, and Jenny Xie (Eye Level) as they read from their most recent publications.

Victoria Chang’s forthcoming book is the much anticipated OBIT, for which she won the Poetry Society of America Alice Fay di Castagnola Award in 2018. Her fourth book of poems, Barbie Chang was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2017. The Boss (McSweeney’s) won a PEN Center USA Literary Award and a California Book Award. Her other books are Salvinia Molesta and Circle. She also edited an anthology, Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation. Her poems have appeared in the Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review, POETRY, Believer, New England Review, VQR, The Nation, New Republic, Tinhouse, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Sustainable Arts Foundation Fellowship in 2017. She is a contributing editor of the literary journal, Copper Nickel, and a poetry editor at Tupelo Quarterly.

Monica Ferrell is the author of three books of fiction and poetry, most recently the collection You Darling Thing (Four Way, 2018). Her novel The Answer Is Always Yes (Dial Press/Random House) was named one of Booklist’s Top Ten Debut Novels of the Year. Her first collection of poems, Beasts for the Chase, was a finalist for the Asian American Writers Workshop Prize in Poetry and won the Sarabande Books Kathryn A. Morton Prize. She has been recognized with residencies at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation and the MacDowell Colony, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, and a Discovery/The Nation Prize. She has taught fiction and poetry for the MFA Program at Columbia University, and is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Purchase College (SUNY). She was born in New Delhi, India, and lives with her husband and children in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.

Jennifer Franklin is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, most recently No Small Gift (Four Way Books, 2018). Her first book, Looming, won the Editor’s Prize from Elixir Press in 2015. She holds an MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts and was nominated for a Rona Jaffe Award in 2016. Her poetry has appeared widely in anthologies, literary magazines, and journals including Blackbird, Boston Review, Gettysburg Review, Guernica, The Nation, New England Review, Paris Review, “poem-a-day” on poets.org, Poetry Daily, Prairie Schooner, Salmagundi, and Verse Daily. A selection of her poetry is featured in Andrew Solomon’s National Book Critics Circle award-winning book, Far from the Tree(Scribner 2012). She is co-editor of Slapering Hol Press. the Hudson Valley Writers Center, where she serves as Program Director. She lives with her family and rescue Pit Bull in New York City.

Meghann Plunkett is a poet, coder, and dog enthusiast. She was named a Best New Poet of 2018, the winner of the 2017 Missouri Review’s Editors’ Prize as well as the winner of the 2017 Third Coast Poetry Prize judged by Natalie Diaz. She was a finalist for the 2016 Narrative Magazine’s 30 Below Contest as well as a finalist for the 2017 North American Review’s Hearst Poetry Prize. She has also been anthologized in the 2017 Best of NetAnthology selected by Eduardo C. Corral. Her poems can be found or are forthcoming in Narrative Magazine, Best New Poets 2018, Third Coast, Pleiades, Rattle, Washington Square Review among many others. Her essays and erasures can be found in Luna Luna Magazine. Her animated poem, “Human” can be found on Button Poetry. She is a writer in residence at Omega Institution and serves as a poetry reader for The New Yorker.

Jenny Xie is the author of Eye Level (Graywolf Press), recipient of the Walt Whitman Award, and finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry, the PEN Open Book Award, and the Dylan Thomas Prize. She has been supported by fellowships from Kundiman, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and Poets & Writers.