influences

Kiki Petrosino reads poems from Hymn for the Black Terrific (2013), Witch Wife (2017), and Black Genealogy (2017).

Dionne Irving reads the short story "An American Idea of Fun" from her second book, The Islands (2022). The story traces the impact of a summer spent in France across an American girl's life. Irving answers questions about the story, The Islands as a whole, and the writers and stories that have inspired her.

Terrances Hayes reads new, uncollected poems together with poems from his most recent books: American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (2018), Watch Your Language: Visual and Literary Reflections on a Century of American Poetry (2023), and So to Speak (2023). Several poems center on writers who have influenced Hayes' work, and the American sonnet form recurs throughout the reading.

Anselm Berrigan delivers a talk on the positive role of influence in his life as writer. Berrigan describes growing up in a family of poets, finding his way to poetry in college, and the continuous shaping of his writing in conversation with other poets on and off the page.