Speculative Sundays Poetry Reading Series Announces 2023 Line Up

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The Speculative Sundays Poetry Reading Series returns with a roster of eight powerful poets presenting their speculative poetry, live on Facebook via Zoom. All readings will be from 7 pm to 8 pm  ET on Sunday evenings.

The schedule:

Hannu Afere                       February 19                           

Lynne Sargent                    March 19                  

Tammy  Walker                  May 21                       

Miguel Mitchell                  June 18                    

Vivian Faith Prescott         August 20                   

Jenna Le                             September 17                      

Jeannine Hall Gailey         November 19         

Brandon O’Brien                 December 17            

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Speculative Sundays was inaugurated in 2020 by Akua Lezli Hope to answer the unmet desire to hear speculative poetry with regularity.  Twenty one poets were presented in the first series and four readings were held in the related series.

About the Poets

Hannu Afere is an author, visual artist and medic whose work has appeared in Sundress Publications, global poets, world poetry, and elsewhere. He co-authored the critically acclaimed graphic novel trinity: Red October in 2018 (Revolution Media) and in 2019, his debut collection of short stories GrimGrin: WTF was published. His first book of poetry Digital Sìgìdì was published in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic, and in 2021, he wrote the screenplay to the Adventures of Captain Blud, an animated series with the Nobel Laureate professor Wole Soyinka (Quartermax Media). Presently, he is the editor-in-chief of the Anthology of Contemporary West African Literature (8th House Publishing, Montréal), and the editor of Our Home, Our Hearth (World Poetry Movement, 2022). He inhabits a paradoxical space, as he is both a martial artist as well as the publications director of the City of Peace Initiative, Lagos. His sophomore book of poetry, Harmattan Wolf is due in November.

Lynne Sargent, a writer and aerialist, who holds a Ph.D. in Applied Philosophy, is the poetry editor at Utopia Science Fiction magazine. Their work has been nominated for Rhysling, Elgin, and Aurora Awards, and has appeared in venues such as Augur Magazine, Strange Horizons, and Daily Science Fiction. Their first collection, A Refuge of Tales, is out now from Renaissance Press. To find out more, reach out to them on Twitter @SamLynneS or for a complete bibliography, visit them at scribbledshadows.wordpress.com.

Tammy D. Walker writes cozy mysteries, poetry, and science fiction.  As T.D. Walker, she’s the author of the poetry collections Small Waiting Objects (CW Books 2019) and Maps of a Hollowed World (Another New Calligraphy 2020).  When she’s not writing, she’s probably reading, trying to find far-away stations on her shortwave radios, making poetry programs, or enjoying tea and scones with her family.

Miguel O. Mitchell, PhD. is a virtual artist, African American speculative poet, and SFF writer based in Rockville, MD. Two of his poems were nominated for the 2022 Rhysling Award in the Long Poem category. He is a retired chemistry professor who sometimes includes chemical imagery in his poetry. 

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Vivian Faith Prescott was born and raised on the island of Ḵaachx̱aana.áakʼw, Wrangell, Alaska, in the Alexander Archipelago where she lives and writes at her fishcamp. She’s Sámi American (Indigenous Sámi diaspora) and a member of the Pacific Sámi Searvi, plus a founding member of Community Roots, the first LGBTQIA group on the island. She’s the author of ten books, including poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. 

Jenna Lê is an American poet and medical doctor. A Minnesota-born daughter of Vietnam War refugees, Lê grew up outside Minneapolis and earned her B.A. in Mathematics from Harvard University and her M.D. from Columbia University. She lives and works in New York City. Jenna Le (jennalewriting.com) is the author of three full-length poetry collections, Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011), A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Indolent Books, 2017), an Elgin Awards Second Place winner, voted on by the international membership of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association, and Manatee Lagoon (Acre Books, 2022). She was selected by Marilyn Nelson as winner of Poetry By The Sea’s inaugural sonnet competition. Her poems appear in AGNI, Denver Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Pleiades, Poet Lore, Verse Daily, and West Branch. A daughter of Vietnamese refugees, she has a B.A. in math and an M.D. and works as a physician in New York City.

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Jeannine Hall Gailey is a poet with multiple sclerosis who served as the 2nd Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington. She's the author of six books of poetry: Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, Field Guide to the End of the World, winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and the Elgin Award, and the upcoming in 2023, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions.  She has a B.S. in Biology and M.A. in English from the University of Cincinnati and an MFA from Pacific University. Her work appeared in The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and Poetry. Her web site is www.webbish6.com. Twitter and Instagram: @webbish6.

Brandon O’Brien is a writer, performance poet, teaching artist and game designer from Trinidad and Tobago. His work has been shortlisted for the 2014 and 2015 Small Axe Literary Competitions and the 2020 Ignyte Award for Best in Speculative Poetry, and is published in Uncanny Magazine, Fireside Magazine, Strange Horizons, and New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean, among others. He is the former Poetry editor of FIYAH: A Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction. His debut poetry collection, Can You Sign My Tentacle?, available from Interstellar Flight Press, is the winner of the 2022 Elgin Award.