death of a parent

Rigoberto González reads from his memoir What Drowns the Flowers in Your Mouth: A Memoir of Brotherhood (2018) and his newest collection of poetry The Book of Ruin (2019).

Victoria Chang reads from her published works Obit (2020), Dear Memory (2021), and The Trees Witness Everything (2022). She also shares new, uncollected poems. Chang's poems touch upon grief from the death of her parents, as well as found material from family archives. She also reads work structured in a Japanese syllabic form called waka.

Edgar Kunz reads from his first two books, Tap Out (2019) and Fixer (2023). Many of the poems he reads center on his father, who suffered from addiction, and reflect on his father's death. He closes with two love poems.

Brenda Hillman reads from In a Few Minutes Before Later (2022), her eleventh collection of poetry, including poems set during the COVID-19 pandemic. She briefly discusses her translation—done in collaboration with her mother—of Brazilian poet Ana Cristina Cesar, and closes with two new poems focused on her mother's garden and her childhood home.