Announcements | Speculative Poetry

2024

Speculative Sundays Readings for Speculative Poetry Month 2024
7 to 8 pm ET
Live on Facebook Via Zoom

November 24

Denise Dumars
Jean-Paul L. Garnier
Jenna Le

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/speculative-sundays-readings-for-speculative-poetry-month-tickets-782968669367
https://www.facebook.com/events/755108236062083

Join us for a unique experience as we delve into the many worlds of speculative poetry by some of today’s foremost creators.

Speculative poetry is humanity’s primordial literature: it is our first verse, the first way humans wrote about and recorded their imaginations and experiences. Nearly everyone knows some speculative poetry—from nursery rhymes, to Edgar Allen Poe, to Puff, the Magic Dragon, it’s been here all along. After an introduction the speculative poets will read their work and answer questions from the audience.

Denise Dumars has published hundreds of poems in magazines, journals, and anthologies. She is the author of seven volumes of poetry, two volumes of short stories, and two nonfiction books. She has been nominated for the Rhysling Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Dwarf Stars award, and the Elgin Award. Her most current chapbook, Animal Gnosis, has just been published by Alien Buddha Press. A retired college English professor and former librarian, literary agent, and entertainment journalist, she’s a fulltime writer now. Denise speaks at various conferences and conventions, including the The Eaton Conference on Science Fiction, The World Fantasy Convention, Westercon, Loscon, StokerCon, Worldcon, and many more. She lives in Los Angeles’ beautiful South Bay region. Find her at www.DeniseDDumars.com.

Jean-Paul L. Garnier is the owner of Space Cowboy Books bookstore and publishing house, producer of Simultaneous Times Podcast(2023 Laureate Award Winner, BSFA, Ignyte, and British Fantasy Award Finalist), and editor of the SFPA's Star*Line magazine. He is also the deputy editor-in-chief of Worlds of IF & Galaxy magazines. In 2024 he won the Laureate Award for Best Editor. He has written many books of poetry and science fiction including Betelgeuse Dimming, Proving Grounds, Future Anthropology, and his forthcoming scifaiku collection, The Future is Brief. https://spacecowboybooks.com/

Jenna Le (jennalewriting.com) is the author of the poetry collections Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011), A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Indolent Books, 2017), and Manatee Lagoon (Acre Books, 2022). She has been a winner of the Poetry By The Sea sonnet competition and sonnet crown competition. Her poems appear in AGNI, Alaska Quarterly Review, Denver Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Pleiades, Poet Lore, Verse Daily, West Branch, and elsewhere. She works as a physician and educator in New York City.

Sunday, November 10, 2024 7 to 8 pm ET

Poets
Mary Soon Lee
Brandon O’Brien
Vivian Faith Prescott

Mary Soon Lee was born and raised in London, but has lived in Pittsburgh for thirty years. She is a Grand Master of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association and a three-time winner of both the AnLab Readers’ Award and the Rhysling Award. Her latest book is "How to Navigate Our Universe," containing how-to astronomy poems. Website: marysoonlee.com.

Brandon O’Brien is a writer, performance poet, teaching artist, and game designer from Trinidad and Tobago. His work was short-listed for the 2014 and 2015 Small Axe Literary Competitions and the 2020 Ignyte Award for Best in Speculative Poetry. He has been 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, won the 2022 Elgin Award.

Vivian Faith Prescott was born and raised on the island of Kaachx̱ana.áakʼw, Wrangell, Alaska, in the Alexander Archipelago. She lives and writes in Lingít Aaní at Mickey’s Fishcamp. She’s a member of the Pacific Sámi Searvi and a founding member of Community Roots, the first LGBTQIA group on the island. She’s the author of 13 books including poetry, short stories, and a foodoir. She’s retired from hosting the award-winning Planet Alaska Facebook page and Planet Alaska column appearing in the Juneau Empire. She currently mentors writers through two Alaskan writers’ groups: Blue Canoe Writers and the Drumlin Poets.

Speculative Poetry Reading for Black Poetry Day 2024

October 17 7 pm to 8 pm EDT

Established in 1970, Black Poetry celebrates the advent of poetry by black poets in America with the birth of Jupiter Hammon,
America’s first black poet, born on October 17, 1711, at the Lloyd Manor in Long Island.
Poets who engage the AfroFantastic will present their intersectional work

Akua Lezli Hope
Jaqueline Johnson
Linda Addison
Miguel Mitchell

Watch live on Facebook @ Poetry Vending Machine via Zoom from 7 to 8 pm EDT.

or get zoom direct tickets via EventBrite

Speculative Sundays Poetry Reading for Disability Awareness Day

July 14, 2024 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. EDT

Our talented poets will take you on a journey through imaginative worlds,

challenging perceptions and celebrating diversity by exploring themes of disability through a speculative lens.

The poets are:

Ennis Rook Bashe

Akua Lezli Hope

Herb Kauderer

John C. Mannone

Starburst: Speculative Poetry Readings for Women’s History Month

The Speculative Sundays Reading Series returns in 2024 with StarBurst, presenting speculative poets every Sunday in Women’s History Month from 7 to 8 p.m. E.T., live on Facebook @speculative poetry via Zoom.

The poets in the StarBurst series are:

March 3 Katherine Quevedo

March 10 Angela Acosta

March 24 Alicia Hilton

March 31 Sherese Francis

After the introduction and poetry reading, the poet engages in conversation with the host and answers questions from the audience.

The event is free and open to the public.

Inaugurated in September 2020, the series seeks to remediate the paucity of presentations of speculative poetry by its living creators. The Speculative Sundays Poetry Reading Series has presented 30 poets thus far.

Speculative poetry, the poetry of possibilities, includes alternate history, astropoetry, cryptids, cyberfunk, cyberpunk, dystopia, fairytales, fabulism, fantasy, folklore, futurism, horror, magic, monsters, mythology, occult, paranormal, robots, science fiction, shifters, slipstream, solar punk, space opera, superheroes, supernatural, sword and sorcery, sword and soul, steamfunk, steampunk, time-travel, post-apocalyptic, and weird. It takes all poetic forms plus scifaiku.

Poets’ Biographies

March 3

Katherine Quevedo was born and raised just outside of Portland, Oregon, where she works as an analyst and lives with her husband and two sons. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Rhysling Award, received an honorable mention in the Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest, and been longlisted for the Kingdoms in the Wild Annual Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Asimov’s, Apparition Literary Magazine, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Old Moon Quarterly, and elsewhere. Her debut mini-chapbook, The Inca Weaver’s Tales, is forthcoming from Sword & Kettle Press in their New Cosmologies series. The Inca Weaver’s Tales traverses a fabled landscape inspired by Ecuadorian and Peruvian folklore in rich, cyclical verse that mimics the interconnected nature of humanity and divinity as a whole. Find her at www.katherinequevedo.com.

March 10

Angela Acosta (she/her) is a bilingual Mexican American poet and Visiting Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies at Davidson College. Her creative and academic work center on imagining possible worlds and preserving the cultural legacies of women writers. She is a 2022 Dream Foundry Contest for Emerging Writers Finalist, 2022 Somos en Escrito Extra-Fiction Contest Honorable Mention, Best of the Net nominee, and Rhysling finalist. Her writing has appeared in Shoreline of Infinity, Apparition Lit, Radon Journal, and Space & Time. She is author of Summoning Space Travelers (Hiraeth Publishing, 2022), A Belief in Cosmic Dailiness: Poems of a Fabled Universe (Red Ogre Review, 2023), and the forthcoming chapbook Fourth Generation Chicana Unicorn (dancing girl press, 2023). She has published on female life-writing, poetry, and literary personas in Persona Studies, Ámbitos Feministas, and Feminist Modernist Studies.

March 24

Alicia Hilton alicia@aliciahilton.com https://aliciahilton.com/contact/ is an author, law professor, arbitrator, actor, and former FBI Special Agent. She believes in angels and demons, magic and monsters. Ever since she was a little girl and saw a ghost, she’s been fascinated by the supernatural. Alicia writes hopepunk—speculative fiction, neo-noir, and poetry about bravery and resistance. Her horror stories are gritty, but there is always a glimmer of hope, and a splash of dark humor. Alicia’s recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Akashic Books, Best Indie Speculative Fiction Volume 3, Daily Science Fiction, Demain Publishing UK, Departure Mirror, DreamForge, Litro, Sci Phi Journal, Space and Time, Vastarien, Year’s Best Hardcore Horror Volumes 4, 5 & 6, and elsewhere.

Alicia has taught writing workshops through MWA and RWA, and has been a guest speaker at more than sixty law schools, including Harvard, the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, Northwestern University, and the University of Southern California. She received her BA in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, and her JD and MA from the University of Chicago. Alicia is an arbitrator with FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. She also is an adjunct professor at the UIC John Marshall Law School.

As an FBI Special Agent, Alicia was a member of a foreign counterintelligence squad, and worked undercover in two long-term criminal cases, posing as a drug dealer with ties to organized crime. Now, Alicia enjoys playing different personalities on the stage and screen. She’s had acting roles with NBC’s Chicago PD, Fox’s Empire & Proven Innocent, Showtime’s The Chi, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the Joffrey Ballet

March 31

Sherese Francis, sheresefrancis1{at}gmail.com, is an Alkymist of the I-Magination and expresses her(e)self through poetry, interdisciplinary arts, workshop facilitation, editing and literary curation. Her(e) work takes inspiration from her(e) Afro-Caribbean heritage (Barbados and Dominica), and studies in Afrofuturism and Black Speculative Arts, mythology and etymology. Some of her(e) work has been published in Furious Flower, Obsidian, Apex Magazine, Bone Bouquet, African Voices, and Newtown Literary. Additionally, Sherese has published three chapbooks, Lucy’s Bone Scrolls (Three Legged Elephant), Variations on Sett/ling Seed/ling (Harlequin Creature), and Recycling a Why That Rules Over My Sacred Sight (DoubleCross Press).

This event is funded in part by Poets & Writers with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

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2023

Speculative Sundays Poetry Reading Series Announces 2023 Line Up

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

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.

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.

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.