Poetry Reading and Q&A with Jenny Xie, Cynthia Manick, and Jennifer Franklin

Feminist poets Jenny Xie, Cynthia Manick, and Jennifer Franklin celebrate National Poetry Month with a reading and Q&A. These readings will be drawn from their new books, which grapple with thorny political issues—both current and historical—and examine how the past and present exist together.

In The Rupture Tense, Xie examines the silence surrounding the Cultural Revolution and explores its lasting impact on her own family. Manick’s No Sweet Without Brine is an elegiac ode to Black womanhood in four parts, both soulful and celebratory. In Franklin’s third collection, If Some God Shakes Your House, she imagines an Antigone who is ferocious, feeling, and unafraid of the consequences of speaking about the political atrocities she has witnessed and the personal trauma she has withstood.

There will be a book signing after the event, with each of the poets’ new collections available for purchase from The Village Bookstore of Pleasantville.

The event will be followed by a reception with special access to the DR Center gallery, currently showing Inspired Encounters: Women Artists and the Legacies of Modern Art.

Co-presented in partnership with the Hudson Valley Writers Center (HVWC).