Dilruba Ahmed (Ruba) is the author of Bring Now the Angels and Dhaka Dust, which won the Bakeless Prize. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, and Poetry. Her poems have also been anthologized in The Best American Poetry 2019, Halal If You Hear Me, Literature: The Human Experience, Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry, and elsewhere. Ahmed is the recipient of The Florida Review’s Editors’ Award, a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Prize, and the Katharine Bakeless Nason Fellowship in Poetry awarded by the Bread Loaf Writers Conference.
Barbara Siegel Carlson is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Current published by Lily Poetry Review Books, 2026. Her poetry and translations have appeared in Verse Daily, Cortland Review, Mid-American Review, Salamander, 2River, The Poetry Porch and others. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Carlson is a Poetry in Translation Editor of Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices. She lives in Carver, Massachusetts.
Raina J. León, PhD, 2026-2027 Philadelphia Poet Laureate, is a Black, Afro-Boricua poet, writer, and educator from southwest Philadelphia (Lenni Lenape ancestral lands). Her work is grounded in collective action and community engagement, centering storytelling, memory, and the liberatory practice of humanizing education across poetry, visual art, and archival practice. She is the author of black god mother this body, Canticle of Idols, Boogeyman Dawn, sombra : (dis)locate, and several chapbooks, and is the founding editor of The Acentos Review, an international journal dedicated to the promotion and publication of Latinx arts. Her work has been supported by fellowships and residencies from organizations including the Obsidian Foundation, MacDowell, Vermont Studio Center, and Ragdale. León is professor emerita at Saint Mary's College of California, where she was the first Afro-Latina to achieve the rank of full professor in the college's more than 150-year history. She currently teaches creative writing in the Stonecoast MFA program at the University of Southern Maine and is a co-founder of the Wild Indigo Poetry Reding Series, the Esperimento Sul Respiro residency program in Italy, and StoryJoy,Inc.
ariel rosé is a trans gender / androgynous / queer poet, essayist, and illustrator originally from Poland, resident of Norway, a nomad. Shortlisted for the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize and Złota Magdalenka Prize in Poland. Ariel is coming to the United States to read from Both Sides Face East. Durable Words, that they edited: well as their latest poetry collection, morze nocą jest mięśniem serca (the sea at night is a muscle of the heart) nominated for the Orfeusz Award, and Północ. Przypowieści, which had its launch at the Miłosz Festival and was nominated for the Polish-German Josepha Award (both published under the name Alicja Rosé). ariel received the Warsaw Literary Award and was named to the IBBY Honor List for their illustrations for Magdalena Tulli’s book Ten i Tamten Las (This and The Other Forest). They were also nominated for the Most Beautiful Book Award for their illustrations for Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz’s Kocia Książka (Cat Book).
Aaren Perry Host - Open Reading Follows