Adam Morgan discusses his new biography, A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls: Margaret C. Anderson, Book Bans, and the Fight to Modernize Literature (Atria/One Signal Publishers, 2025).
Morgan’s book is the first biography solely devoted to Margaret C. Anderson, the founder of the avant-garde literary and arts magazine The Little Review, which she began publishing in Chicago in 1914. The influential Little Review showcased many famous writers of its time, including T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, Hart Crane, Sherwood Anderson and Hemingway. But it would become most celebrated—and notorious—for being the first publisher of James Joyce’s towering modernist novel Ulysses. After putting out nearly two thirds of the novel in serial installments from 1918 through 1920, Margaret Anderson and her romantic partner and co-editor Jane Heap were charged and found guilty of obscenity under the Comstock Act for distributing Joyce’s sexually frank passages through the mail. They were deemed “a danger to the minds of young girls.”
A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls tells a very compelling story of an iconoclastic woman who was determined to make a space for difficult and challenging art and whose efforts changed forever what could be addressed in literature and what could be considered beautiful.
Adam Morgan is himself the founder of the indispensable Chicago Review of Books, and a great promoter of the literature of our city. We are especially thrilled to be having this conversation now, as we just began a six-month discussion group on Ulysses at our library. Listen to hear why Ulysses wouldn’t exist without Chicago and how understanding Anderson’s life helps reveal the true stakes, triumphs, and world-changing “dangers” of James Joyce’s masterpiece.
Adam Morgan is a culture journalist and critic who lives near Chapel Hill, North Carolina. His writing has appeared in Esquire, WIRED, Scientific American, Inverse, The Paris Review, Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. He writes a newsletter about forthcoming books called The Frontlist. He is the founding editor of the Chicago Review of Books, the Southern Review of Books, and the Chicago Literary Archive.
You can check out A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls in our Podcast Collection, featuring books and other materials by past guests of the show. Find out more about Adam Morgan at his website.
We hope you enjoy our 70th interview episode! Each month (or so), we release an episode featuring a conversation with an author, artist, or other notable guests from Chicagoland or around the world. Learn more about the podcast on our podcast page. You can listen to all of our episodes in the player below or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments and feedback—please send to podcast@deerfieldlibrary.org.
This month on the Deerfield Public Library Podcast, we are very happy to welcome writer and artist Annah Feinberg to talk about her hilarious and moving debut full-length graphic novel, Goodbye, Dolly! Narrated from beyond the grave by Dolly, the famous cloned sheep born in 1996, Goodbye, Dolly! tells the story of her six disaffected children (or as Annah calls them, “nepo lambs”) as they search the Scottish countryside for their identity after their mother’s death.
Annah Feinberg has written many comics and humor pieces for publications like The New Yorker, McSweeney's, Bon Appétit, and Awry, which often skewer the indignities of life (“The Utter Humiliation of Being a Body”) and a Millennial combination of high self-regard and economic precarity (“Millennials Are the First Generation in History to Inspire Think Pieces About Millennials”). We discuss how these themes also shine through the very anxious sheep of Goodbye, Dolly! You’ll also hear how Feinberg’s unique art style, which features stock image backgrounds, brilliantly inhabits the exhausted detritus of our culture.
Feinberg also grew up here in Deerfield, and we are thrilled we get to celebrate her work as her hometown library! Listen for a fun—and funny—conversation about existential crises through the perhaps unlikely characters of cartoon sheep.
Annah Feinberg writes and draws, often at the very same time. Her previous comics and humor writing have been featured in The New Yorker, McSweeney's, Bon Appétit, Awry, Mutha Magazine, The Hairpin, the collection Notes from the Bathroom Line, and in her zines The Shapelies, Food Source, and Me Myselves And. Annah has developed adult animated shows for Showtime and AMC, wrote and produced short films Fetus Monster and The Workplace, and is currently developing another adult animated show, writing two live-action features and working on another graphic novel. Formerly a playwright, dramaturg, and Hollywood assistant, Annah has an MFA in Dramaturgy from Columbia University and was a founding member of theater activist group The Kilroys. Before that, she was a child who wrote and drew, often at the very same time.
You can check out Goodbye, Dolly! and other titles by Annah Feinberg here in our Podcast Collection, featuring books and other materials by past guests of the show. Find out more about Annah at her website or on her Instagram @annahfeinberg.
We hope you enjoy our 69th interview episode! Each month (or so), we release an episode featuring a conversation with an author, artist, or other notable guests from Chicagoland or around the world. Learn more about the podcast on our podcast page. You can listen to all of our episodes in the player below or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments and feedback—please send to podcast@deerfieldlibrary.org.
Theodore C. Van Alst, Jr., in conversation on his new novel The El (Vintage Books, 2025).
A love letter to our city of Chicago, The El follows a group of teen gang members in August 1979 as they travel across the city to a summit where gangs plan to join forces. But the reality is less like the movie The Warriors and more like the creation of a corporate structure, and leader Teddy—a devoted reader and the only Indigenous member of the gang—has to rely on his book smarts, street smarts, and the guiding spirit of Coyote to find a way to their next destination.
Van Alst Jr. is also the author of a stunning trilogy of “mosaic novels” of linked short stories, also starring his semi-autobiographical character Teddy: Sacred Smokes (2018), Sacred City (2021), and Sacred Folks (2024). In our conversation, we learn how the author’s depiction of Teddy evolved to include more and more voices, and how literature can help us recover the past, see the future, and appreciate the “magic light.”
Theodore C. Van Alst, Jr. (enrolled member, Mackinac Bands of Chippewa and Ottawa Indians) is the co-editor of Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology (Vintage). He is the award-winning author of the trilogy Sacred Smokes, Sacred City, and Sacred Folks as well as the editor of The Faster Redder Road: The Best UnAmerican Stories of Stephen Graham Jones (2015), all from the University of New Mexico Press. His novella Pour One for the Devil: A Gothic Novella was published in 2024 from Lanternfish Press.
You can check out titles by Theodore C. Van Alst, Jr. here at the Library as part of our Podcast Collection, featuring books and other materials by past guests of the show. Find out more about Ted on his website or his Instagram @TVAyyyy.
We hope you enjoy our 68th interview episode! Each month (or so), we release an episode featuring a conversation with an author, artist, or other notable guests from Chicagoland or around the world. Learn more about the podcast on our podcast page. You can listen to all of our episodes in the player below or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments and feedback—please send to podcast@deerfieldlibrary.org.
Our conversation with poet, writer, and translator James Shea, whose extraordinary new collection of poems Last Day of My Face (University of Iowa Press, 2025), was recently published as a winner of the prestigious Iowa Poetry Prize.
James Shea’s work delights in word play and unexpected images with a voice set at and considering the edges of meaning. As you’ll hear in our conversation, Shea draws from the traditions of haiku and The New York School, giving us humorous and elegiac meditations on our shared predicament as minds trying to make sense of emergency. Or, as Shea puts it at the start of the long poem, “Failed Self-Portrait,” which ends his new collection—and our conversation, “I’ve made a sort of makeshift / sense of ourselves…”
What makes this conversation especially meaningful is that our recording was also a reunion; my colleague, Adult Services Librarian Stevie Noguchi, and I each had James Shea as a poetry professor when he taught in Chicago over a decade ago. Stevie joins me as co-host for this special episode.
You’ll also hear Shea’s reflections on the art of translation, poetic lineage, and readings from the treasure trove of recent publications Shea has put out, as translator and editor, including:
Applause for a Cloud (Black Ocean, 2025), Shea’s translations of haiku by Japanese poet Sayumi Kamakura,
The Routledge Global Haiku Reader (Routledge, 2023), an introduction to current issues within haiku studies, which Shea co-edited with Grant Caldwell, and,
Moving a Stone: Selected Poems of Yam Gong (Zephyr Press, 2022), co-translated with novelist Dorothy Tse and introducing Hong Kong poet Yam Gong to English-language readers
James Shea is associate professor and director of the creative and professional writing program at Hong Kong Baptist University. His previous poetry collections The Lost Novel (2014) and Star in the Eye (2008) were both published by Fence Books.
You can check out titles by James Shea here at the Library as part of our Podcast Collection, featuring books and other materials by past guests of the show.
Our Queer Poem-a-Day "outro" episode, featuring three "extras" for Year 5!
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 20: Ocean Vuong reads his poem "The Last Dinosaur.” This poem first appeared in a slightly different form in The Boston Review (2021) and in his collection Time is a Mother (Penguin Press, 2022).
Writer, professor, and photographer, Ocean Vuong is the author of The Emperor of Gladness. Born in Saigon, Vietnam and raised in Hartford, Connecticut in a working class family of nail salon and factory laborers, he currently splits his time between western Massachusetts and New York City, where he serves as a Professor in Modern Poetry and Poetics in the MFA Program at NYU.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 19: Mark Doty reads his poem, “A Display of Mackerel,” which first appeared in his collection Atlantis (Harper Perennial, 1995).
Mark Doty is the author of nine books of poetry. Fire to Fire: New & Selected Poems, won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2008.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 18: Rose Zinnia reads her poem, “I'm Like If Mary Oliver Had Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.” This poem was originally published in Poetry (April 2025).
Rose Zinnia is a poet, novelist, essayist, teaching artist, editor, and designer. Born in Akron, Ohio, she is the author of Togethering (Ledge Mule Press, 2024), a chapbook of poetry & lyric essay. A 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, Zinnia’s honors also include fellowships and residencies from Vermont Studio Center, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and the Kinsey Institute. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in The Offing, Poetry, CV2, Black Warrior Review, Poem-A-Day, The Journal, Gulf Coast, and West Branch, among others. She holds an MFA from Indiana University, works at the LGBTQ+ journal and press Foglifter, and lives in Cleveland, Ohio.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 17: Nikky Finney reads her poem “Charm,” originally published in her collection The World is Round (InnerLight Publishing, 2003).
Nikky Finney is the author of On Wings Made of Gauze; Rice; The World Is Round; and Head Off & Split, which won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2011. Her new collection of poems, Love Child’s Hotbed of Occasional Poetry, was released in 2020. Finney is Carolina Distinguished Professor at USC in Columbia where she is also Director of the Ernest A. Finney Jr. Cultural Arts Center.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 16: Oliver Baez Bendorf reads his poem “What the Dead Can Do, which was originally published in West Branch (2021), reprinted in Best American Poetry 2022, and in his book Consider the Rooster (Nightboat Books, 2024).
Oliver Baez Bendorf is the author of three books of poetry, including Consider the Rooster, a finalist for the 2024 National Book Critics Circle Award. Born and raised in Iowa, he now lives and writes in exile.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 15: Jayson P. Smith reads their poem, “I Arrive in a Place with a High Level of Psychic Distress.” Queer Poem-a-Day is honored to be the first publication of this poem.
Jayson P. Smith is a poet, dancer, educator, & curator from the Bronx. J is the recipient of fellowships from Hawthornden Foundation, NYFA, The Poetry Project, and Callaloo. They curate NOMAD Readings in Brooklyn (& elsewhere).
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 14:
Jessica Jacobs reads her poem, "Saturday Services at the Provincetown Shore" from her book unalone (Four Way Books, 2024). Recorded with permission of Four Way Books. All rights reserved.
Jessica Jacobs, a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow, is the author of unalone, poems in conversation with the Book of Genesis (Four Way Books, March 2024); Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going (Four Way Books, 2019), one of Library Journal’s Best Poetry Books of the Year, winner of the Devil’s Kitchen and Goldie Awards, and a finalist for the Brockman-Campbell, American Fiction, and Julie Suk Book Awards; Pelvis with Distance (White Pine Press, 2015), a biography-in-poems of Georgia O’Keeffe, winner of the New Mexico Book Award in Poetry and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award; and co-author of Write It! 100 Poetry Prompts to Inspire (Spruce Books/Penguin RandomHouse). She is the founder and executive director of Yetzirah: A Hearth for Jewish Poetry.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 13: Francisco Márquez reads his poem, “The Bulge,” first published in The Adroit Journal (April 2025).
Francisco Márquez is a poet from Maracaibo, Venezuela, born in Miami, Florida. His work has been featured in the Yale Review, the Brooklyn Rail, the Slowdown podcast, and the Best American Poetry anthology. He has received support from the Tin House Writer's Workshop, The Poetry Project, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where he was a 2019-2020 Poetry Fellow. He works and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 12: Jaz Sufi reads her poem, “Ode to My Lover's Sequined Dress.” Queer Poem-a-Day is honored to be the first publication of this poem.
Jaz Sufi (she/hers) is a queer Iranian-American poet and arts educator. Her work has been published or is upcoming in Best New Poets, Best of the Net, AGNI, Black Warrior Review, Muzzle, and elsewhere. She is a National Poetry Slam finalist and has received fellowships from Kundiman, the Watering Hole, and New York University, where she received her MFA. She is the current Poet Laureate of San Ramon, CA, where she lives with her dog, Apollo.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 11: Gabrielle Calvocoressi reads their poem, “Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you” originally published in Poetry (October 2021).
Gabrielle Calvocoressi is the author of The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart, Apocalyptic Swing (a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize), and Rocket Fantastic, winner of the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry. Calvocoressi is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including a Stegner Fellowship and Jones Lectureship from Stanford University; a Rona Jaffe Woman Writer's Award; a Lannan Foundation residency in Marfa, TX; the Bernard F. Conners Prize from The Paris Review; and a residency from the Civitella di Ranieri Foundation, among others. Calvocoressi's poems have been published or are forthcoming in numerous magazines and journals including The Baffler, The New York Times, POETRY, Boston Review, Kenyon Review, Tin House, and The New Yorker. Calvocoressi is an Editor at Large at Los Angeles Review of Books, and Poetry Editor at Southern Cultures. Works in progress include a non-fiction book entitled, The Year I Didn't Kill Myself and a novel, The Alderman of the Graveyard. Calvocoressi was the Beatrice Shepherd Blane Fellow at the Harvard-Radcliffe Institute for 2022 - 2023. Calvocoressi teaches at UNC Chapel Hill and lives in Old East Durham, NC, where joy, compassion, and social justice are at the center of their personal and poetic practice. Their new collection of poetry, The New Economy, will be released from Copper Canyon in 2025.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 10: Jan-Henry Gray reads his poem “On Therapy,” first published in the anthology Permanent Record: Poetics Towards the Archive (Nightboat Books, 2025), edited by Naima Yael Tokunow.
Jan-Henry Gray is the author of Documents, selected by D.A. Powell as the winner of BOA Editions’ Poulin Poetry Prize, and the chapbook Selected Emails. His poems have been included in various anthologies, including Here to Stay: Poetry and Prose from the Undocumented Diaspora (HarperCollins, 2024), Permanent Record: Poetics Towards the Archive (Nightboat, 2024), as well as Essential Queer Voices of U.S. Poetry, Queer Nature, and Nepantla: An Anthology for Queer Poets of Color. He’s received fellowships from Undocupoets, the Cooke Foundation Award, and Kundiman. He was born in the Philippines, raised in California, and worked as a chef for over 12 years. He is an assistant professor at Adelphi University and teaches in their low-residency MFA program.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 9: Timothy Liu reads his poem “The Price of Kissing is Your Life,” originally published in the Georgia Review (Spring 2025).
Timothy Liu's most recent books of poems are Down Low and Lowdown and Luminous Debris, both out from Barrow Street. A reader of occult esoterica, he teaches at SUNY New Paltz and Vassar College.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 8: Lloyd Schwartz reads his poem “Who’s On First?” This poem was originally published in Ploughshares (1981) and reprinted in Who's On First: New and Selected Poems (University of Chicago Press, 2021).
Lloyd Schwartz is poet laureate of Somerville, the Frederick S. Troy Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and a longtime arts critic for NPR’s Fresh Air. He’s published five books of poetry, a collection of his music reviews, and has edited three volumes devoted to the works of Elizabeth Bishop. Among his honors are the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, NEA, and Academy of American Poets for his poetry. His poems have been selected for the Pushcart Prize, The Best American Poetry, and The Best of the Best American Poetry. His next collection, “Artur Schnabel and Joseph Szigeti Play Mozart at the Frick Collection (April 4, 1948)” and Other Poems, will appear next year from Arrowsmith Press.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 7: Keetje Kuipers reads her poem “Cremello Horse,” which first appeared in the magazine 32 Poems and was then published in Lonely Women Make Good Lovers (BOA Editions, 2025).
Keetje Kuipers’ fourth collection of poetry, Lonely Women Make Good Lovers, was the recipient of the Isabella Gardner Award. Her poetry and prose have appeared in American Poetry Review, New York Times Magazine, and Poetry, and have been honored by publication in the Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies. Keetje has been a Stegner Fellow, NEA Literature Fellow in Creative Writing, and the Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Resident. She lives with her wife and children in Montana, where she is Editor of Poetry Northwest.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 6: Gaia Rajan reads his poem “Essay on Class,” which originally appeared in Frontier Poetry (2023).
Gaia Rajan is the author of the chapbooks Moth Funerals (Glass Poetry Press 2020) and Killing It (Black Lawrence Press 2022). His work is published in the Academy of American Poets' Poem-A-Day, Best New Poets, the Best of the Net anthology, The Kenyon Review, THRUSH, Split Lip Magazine, diode, Palette Poetry, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn and online at @gaiarajan on Twitter or Instagram.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 5: Rick Barot reads his poem “Pleasure,” which appears in his recent book, Moving the Bones.
Rick Barot's most recent book of poems is Moving the Bones, published by Milkweed Editions in 2024. His previous book, The Galleons, was longlisted for the National Book Award. He lives in Tacoma, Washington, and directs the Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 4: S. Brook Corfman reads her poem “Before & After.” The poem first appeared in Pigeon Pages (2020), in a slightly different form.
S. Brook Corfman is the author of My Daily Actions, or The Meteorites, one of The New York Times Best Poetry Books of 2020, finalist for the Leslie Feinberg Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature, and winner of the Fordham University Press POL Prize, chosen by Cathy Park Hong. She is also the author of the poetry collection Luxury, Blue Lace, chosen by Richard Siken for the Autumn House Rising Writer Prize, and several chapbooks. In 2024 she received the Lyric Poetry Award from the Poetry Society of America.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 3: Marcelo Hernandez Castillo reads his poem “Eclogue: A Field Guide and Cure.” The poem was published in the recent anthology Like A Hammer: Poets on Mass Incarceration (Haymarket Books, 2025).
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is the author of Children of the Land: a Memoir (Harper Collins); Cenzontle (BOA Editions), winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. prize; Dulce (Northwestern University Press), winner of the Drinking Gourd Prize; and, most recently, he is the co-editor of the anthology Here to Stay: Poetry and Prose from the Undocumented Diaspora (Harper Perennial). He is the 2025 guest editor of the Michigan Quarterly Review and has also curated the Academy of American Poet’s Poem-A-Day Series. His work has been long listed for the California Book Award, the Foreword Indies Prize, and the Lambda Literary Award, among other recognitions.
He was the first undocumented student to graduate from the Helen Zell Writers Program at the University of Michigan and co-founded the Undocupoets, which eliminated citizenship requirements from all major poetry book prizes in the U.S., and for which he was recognized with the Barnes and Noble Writers for Writers award.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 2: Faylita Hicks reads their poem “A Gxrl's Trip Home.” This poem was originally published in A Map of My Want (Haymarket Books, 2024).
Faylita Hicks (she/they) is a writer, interdisciplinary artist, Hoodoo practitioner, and cultural strategist exploring the intersections of social justice and spirituality. They are the author of A Map of My Want (Haymarket, 2024), HoodWitch (Acre, 2019), and the forthcoming memoir A Body of Wild Light (Haymarket, 2027). A 2025 Haymarket Writing Freedom Fellow and Definition Theatre Amplify finalist, Hicks contributed to a Grammy-nominated album and has earned awards and honors from Art for Justice Fund, Lambda Literary, and the Right of Return Fellowship. They hold an MFA from the University of Nevada, Reno, and have received fellowships from Black Mountain Institute, Tin House, and others. Hicks serves as Chair of the Board for The Guild Literary Complex, Core Poetry Faculty at StoryStudio, adjunct faculty for the University of Nevada’s MFA program, and is a voting member of the Recording Academy.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
Day 1: Jericho Brown reads his poem “Duplex.” This poem was originally published in The Progressive Magazine (2019).
Jericho Brown is the author of The Tradition, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He is also a recipient of the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship.
Text of today’s poem and more details about our program can be found at: deerfieldlibrary.org/queerpoemaday/
Find books from participating poets in our library's catalog.
Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.