A Poetry Reading with Owen Lewis, Harriet Shenkman, and Dorsía Smith Silva

Owen Lewis is the author of four collections of poetry and three chapbooks, most recently A Prayer of Six Wings. His prior collection, Field Light, was a “Must Read” selection of the New England Book Awards. Honors include the 2024 E.E.Cummings Prize, the 2023 Guernsey International Poetry Prize, the 2023 Rumi Prize for Poetry, the International Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine, and the Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award. At Columbia University he is Professor of Psychiatry in the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics and teaches Narrative Medicine. (www.owenlewispoet.com)

Harriet Shenkman earned a Ph.D. from Fordham University, an M.Ed. from Duke University, and is a professor emerita at City University of New York. Her poetry awards include the Women’s National Book Association Annual Contest and the Women Who Write International Poetry Contest. Her work has appeared in over 20 literary journals, including Westchester Review, The Alexandria Quarterly, Comstock Review, The Berru Poetry Series of the Jewish Book Council, Fig Tree Press, Yetzirah, and The Marbled Sigh. Her chapbooks, Teetering (2014) and The Present Abandoned (2020), were published by Finishing Line Press. Her poetry collection, Wonder Wheel (2023), was published by Grayson Books. Her forthcoming chapbook, Re-Coupling, will be published by Kelsay Books (2025). She is a former Poet-in-Residence at the JCC, Mid-Westchester and currently at Broadview Senior Living. She studied at the Hudson Valley Writers Center and the 92nd Street Y. She has given readings at public libraries and literary venues. Raised in Brooklyn, New York, she is a first generation American.

Dorsía Smith Silva is the author of In Inheritance of Drowning (CavanKerry, 2024), which was a finalist for the Whirling Prize and reviewed by Publishers Weekly. She is a multi-nominated Pushcart Prize nominee, Best of the Net finalist, Best New Poets nominee, Cave Canem Poetry Prize Semifinalist, Obsidian Fellow, Poetry Editor at The Hopper, and Full Professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. Literary Hub, Poets.org, Split This Rock, and The Los Angeles Review have published her work, and poems are forthcoming in The Cimarron Review and Beloit Poetry Journal. She has attended the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Workshop, Bread Loaf Writers’ Workshop, Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop, Tin House Winter Workshop, Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference, and Poets and Scholars Summer Writers Retreat at the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice. She is the recipient of the Katharine Bakeless Nason Scholarship from Bread Loaf and Voices of Color Fellowship (Second Place) from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. She is also a member of the Get the Word Out Poetry Cohort and 5 Over 50 Cohort of Poets & Writers in 2024. Moreover, she is the author of Good Girl (poetry micro-chapbook), editor of Latina/Chicana Mothering, and the co-editor of seven books. Looking to increase the visibility of poetry by BIPOC authors, she is the creator of the Smith Silva Challenge which is a reading challenge that highlights poetry books by BIPOC authors. Dorsía Smith Silva has a Ph.D. in Caribbean Literature and Language. She is on social media @DSmithSilva.