WesPress x Shapiro

Wesleyan University Press is one of the world’s outstanding publishers of contemporary poetry. The Press has garnered national and international accolades for its work, including six Pulitzer Prizes, three National Book Awards, two National Book Critics Circle Awards, three Griffin Poetry Prizes, and an Anisfield-Wolf Award, among many others. Its authors include John Cage, Norman O. Brown, M.C. Richards, Samuel R. Delany, Joy Harjo, James Wright, James Tate, Peter Gizzi, Brenda Hillman, Rae Armantrout, Yusef Komunyakaa, M. NourbeSe Philip, Sally Banes, Ralph Lemon, and Tricia Rose.

The WesPress x Shapiro series celebrates recent publications by the press’s authors through evenings of readings and conversation. All events are free and open to the public.

Featured Poets

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    Idra Novey

    Idra Novey is the author most recently of Take What You Need, a New York Times Notable Book of 2023 and finalist for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and two other novels. Her second poetry collection Exit, Civilian was chosen by Patricia Smith for the National Poetry Series. She is the co-translator with Ahmad Nadalizadeh of Iranian poet Garous Abdolmalekian, Lean Against This Late Hour, a finalist for the PEN America Poetry in Translation Prize in 2021. Her fiction and poetry have been translated into a dozen languages and she’s written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and The Guardian. She teaches creative writing at Princeton University.

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    Rae Armantrout

    RAE ARMANTROUT is the author of fifteenbooks including Versed, which received a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle Award; Finalists; Conjure; Wobble (finalist for a National Book Award); Partly: New and Selected Poems; Itself; Just Saying; and Money Shot. Armantrout is Professor Emerita of Writing at the University of California at San Diego. She has been published in many anthologies, including, The Oxford Book of American Poetry, and Scribner's Best American Poetry, and in such magazines as, Harpers, The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Scientific American, Chicago Review, and the Los Angeles Times Book Review.