7014-A WESTMORELAND AVE
TAKOMA PARK, MARYLAND
20912
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The Green Way Reading Series: Vol. 17
May 4, 2025 @ 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm
Free
The Green Way Reading Series is a monthly literary event based in Takoma Park, MD curated by Simon Shieh and Takoma Park’s Poet Laureate Taylor Johnson. The series centers emerging and established poets and artists in interdisciplinary, intergenerational and cross-regional dialogues. We want these programs to encourage growing participation and local engagement in the evolving landscape of contemporary poetry.
Chet’la Sebree is the author Field Study, winner of the 2020 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, and Mistress. Her third poetry collection Blue Opening and debut essay collection turn (w)here: essays on (be)longing are forthcoming in 2025 and 2026, respectively. She’s an assistant professor at The George Washington University and faculty in Randolph College’s Low-Residency MFA program.
Airea D. Matthews’ first collection of poems is the critically acclaimed Simulacra, which received the prestigious 2016 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. Matthews is also the author of Bread and Circus, a memoir-in-verse, which was awarded The 2024 LA Times Book Prize in Poetry, the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award and was named a finalist for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award in Poetry. Matthews has earned a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship, a Pew Fellowship, and the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. From 2022-2023, she served as Philadelphia’s 6th Poet Laureate. She is an associate professor and co-chairs the creative writing department at Bryn Mawr College, where she was presented the Lindback Distinguished Teaching award and the Rosabeth Moss Kanter Change Master Award.
Sanam Sheriff is a queer poet, artist, and educator from Bangalore, India. They have received support from the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, Kundiman, The Fine Arts Work Center, Brew & Forge, The Watering Hole, and The Seventh Wave, among others. Sanam’s work has been published or is forthcoming in Indiana Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Rumpus, The Academy of American Poets, The Adroit Journal, Washington Square Review, The Offing, Outlook India, and elsewhere. Sanam holds an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. They currently serve as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Bryn Mawr College where they organize the Reading Series. Sanam is working, with much love, on their debut poetry collection.
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This is an in-person event. Seated capacity at People’s Book is 50 patrons. Standing room is an option. All events are first-come, first-served seating. Accessible seating is always available.