Join us for an evening of poetry and prose in celebration of the comforts of nature and home cooking! Two award-winning authors will read from their newest work.

Hannah Fries - A Forest Language

What is crown shyness, and how could a tree be shy? What is heartwood, and what does it have to do with the heart? So often even our scientific terms are rife with surprising etymologies and images that may reveal as much about us humans and our relationship to nature as they do about the things they describe. Words related to trees and forests are no exception.

With a poet’s sensibility, Hannah Fries peels back the layers of these ecological terms, reflecting on their meaning both literally and figuratively, intertwining science and metaphor.

"A Forest Language is an exquisite cabinet of arboreal wonders, where each term becomes a story and each story a portal into the secret lives of trees, written with the precision of a naturalist and the tenderness of a poet."—Diane Ackerman, author of A Natural History of the Senses

Major Jackson - A Bowl of Goodness: Nourishing Poems with a Side of Soup, Celebrating Community, Friendship, and Resilience

Poetry and soup both offer sustenance and comfort. And yet, the secret ingredient to every great meal is not what we see on the plate, but who we see around the table. This anthology features poems by today's best poets that embody the idea of nourishment, comfort, and connection across cultures and generations. Among the poems are 24 of Major's own favorite soup recipes: from apple-parsnip to gumbo, borscht to bouillabaisse, there's something to tickle and warm all tastebuds.

Sprinkled throughout are side-dishes of soup-inspired stories by award-winning writers and chefs, including Ann Patchett and chef Jim Huntington of Maple Soul. Other contributors include Garrett Hongo, Jane Hirshfield, Pablo Neruda, Natasha Tretheway, Paul Muldoon, Rita Dove, Ilya Kaminsky, Kwame Dawes, Gary Snyder, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Kevin Young, and more.

“A Bowl of Goodness recognizes the care inherent in cooking and in writing. Poems feed us in ways nothing else can, and they continue to sustain us long after we’ve read them, as this book will.” —Maggie Smith, author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful

HANNAH FRIES is the author of Being with Trees (Storey) and the poetry collection Little Terrarium (Hedgerow Books). Her poetry and prose have appeared in such places as The Marginalian, Terrain.org, Orion, and American Poetry Review. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and she was awarded a scholarship from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. From 2005 to 2014 she was an editor at Orion magazine.

MAJOR JACKSON is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Razzle Dazzle: New & Selected Poems, recipient of the inaugural Patricia Cannon Willis Prize from Yale Library. His edited volumes include Best American Poetry 2019, Renga for Obama, and Library of America’s Countee Cullen: Collected Poems. Former host of The Slowdown podcast, from American Public Media, he is the recipient of fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, John S. Guggenheim Foundation, and National Endowment for the Arts. He serves as poetry editor of The Harvard Review.