Slapering Hol Press Presents: Eight Debut Poets (via Zoom)

Join SHP co-editors and SHP Advisory Committee as they welcome eight debut poets. Jared Beloff, Andrew Collard, India Lena González, Nicholas Goodly, Safia Jama, Judy Katz, Stephanie Laterza, & Hila Ratzabi will read from their most recent poetry collections.

NB: This reading will take place on Zoom. The link will be sent to the email that you use to register as soon as you reserve a spot. (Please check your spam folder and save the link to your calendar.) It will also be sent to you the day of the reading for your convenience.

Jared Beloff is the author of Who Will Cradle Your Head (ELJ Editions, 2023) and the microchap This is how we say “I love you” (Kissing Dynamite Press, Fall 2022). He earned degrees at Rutgers University (BA in English), Johns Hopkins University (MA in English Literature, specializing in the novel and Romantic/18th Century Literature). Jared has been an adjunct professor at Queensborough Community College, an English teacher and a teacher mentor in NYC public schools for 16 years. Jared is currently a peer reviewer for The Whale Road Review. His poetry can be found in Contrary Magazine, Barren Magazine, KGB Bar Lit, The Shore, Rise Up Review, Bending Genres and elsewhere. His work has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Queens, NY.

Andrew Collard’s first book, Sprawl (Ohio University Press, 2023), was the winner of the Hollis Summers poetry prize. Poems from Sprawl have appeared in Ploughshares, AGNI, Best New Poets, and many more journals and magazines. Andrew received a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from Western Michigan University, and currently teaches as a Visiting Professor at Grand Valley State University. Over the years, he has served as a poetry editor for Witness and Third Coast Magazine, and as an associate editor for New Issues Press. He currently lives in Grand Rapids, MI, with his son.

India Lena González is a poet, editor, and artist. Winner of the Blessing the Boats Selections, her upcoming book, fox woman get out!, will be published by BOA Editions in September 2023. She received her BA from Columbia University, where she graduated with honors, and her MFA from NYU’s Creative Writing program. While at NYU she served as a writing instructor for undergraduates and received a Writers in the Public Schools fellowship enabling her to teach literature to middle school students via Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Her work is published in Poets & Writers Magazine, American Chordata, The Brooklyn Review, PANK, Pigeon Pages, Lampblack, and Glass: A Journal of Poetry, among others. A three-time National Poetry Series finalist, India is also a professionally trained dancer, choreographer, and actor. She lives in Harlem.

Nicholas Goodly is the author of Black Swim (Copper Canyon, 2022). They are a team member of the performing arts platform Fly on a Wall and assistant poetry editor for The Southeast Review. Nicholas was a finalist for the 2020 Jake Adam York Prize, runner-up for the 2019 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and recipient of the 2017 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship, among other awards. Their work has appeared in The New Yorker, Boston Review, BOMB, The Poetry Project, Lambda Literary, Narrative Magazine, and elsewhere.

Safia Jama was born to a Somali father and an Irish American mother in Queens, New York. A Cave Canem graduate fellow, she has published poetry in Ploughshares, Boston Review, World Literature Today, Spoken Black Girl, and Poem-a-Day. Her poetry has also been featured on WNYC’s Morning Edition and CUNY TV’s Shades of US series. She is the author of Notes on Resilience, included in the New-Generation African Poets chapbook box set (Akashic Books, 2020). Her full-length poetry collection, Crowded House, is forthcoming from Beltway Editions (Fall 2023).

Judy Katz’s debut poetry collection, How News Travels, won the 2021 Gerald Cable Book Award and will be published by Silverfish Review Press in Summer 2023. Her poems have appeared on Poetry Daily and in The New York Times Book Review, Salamander, The Women’s Review of Books, Plume, upstreet, and other print and online journals. Katz’s work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and widely anthologized, appearing in publications such as Best Indie Lit New England, The Best of the Bellevue Literary Review, The Torah: A Women’s Commentary, and Treelines: an anthology of 21st century American poems. Judy was born and raised in Memphis, TN and graduated from Barnard College with honors. She received her MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. For many years, Katz worked as a documentary filmmaker and producer of public television. She currently teaches poetry in New York City.

Stephanie Laterza’s full-length poetry book, Verás, will be published by Broadstone Books in Summer 2023. She is a writer and attorney from Brooklyn, NY. Stephanie is a 2018 SU-CASA award recipient from the Brooklyn Arts Council and the author of feminist legal thriller, The Boulevard Trial. Stephanie’s work has appeared in L’Éphémère Review, First Literary Review-East, Ovunque Siamo, Literary Mama, Akashic Books, A Gathering of the Tribes, Newtown Literary, The Nottingham Review, Obra/Artifact, Latina Outsiders: Remaking Latina Identity (Routledge, 2019), and elsewhere.

Hila Ratzabi is a poet, writer, and editor. Her first full-length book of poetry, There Are Still Woods, was published in September 2022 from June Road Press. She was a finalist for the Fourth Genre Steinberg Essay Prize (2019) and for the Fifth Annual Narrative Magazine Poetry Contest (2013). She is the author of a poetry chapbook, The Apparatus of Visible Things (2009). Her essays have appeared in the Ten Percent Happier blog, the Wisdom Daily, the Jewish Daily Forward, Kveller, Alma, MUTHA Magazine, and others. Her poetry has been published in Narrative, Linebreak, Drunken Boat, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Adroit Journal, The Nervous Breakdown, The Normal School, and other journals. Her poetry also appears in The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry and Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology. Ratzabi holds an MFA in Poetry Writing from Sarah Lawrence College (2007), a BA in English from Barnard College (2003), and a BA in Jewish Philosophy from the Jewish Theological Seminary (2003). She lives in Oak Park, IL, with her husband and two children.