Join us in celebrating Poetry Month, with a reading and conversation between poets Derrick Austin and Keith S. Wilson. Derrick Austin will discuss his Isabella Gardner Award-winning book, Tenderness. This book was recently selected as a 2022 Lambda Literary Award Finalist for Gay Poetry. The poems in this book examine the fraught nature of intimacy in a nation poisoned by anti-Blackness and homophobia.

‍

About the Authors

‍

Derrick Austin is the author of Tenderness (BOA Editions, 2021), winner of the 2020 Isabella Gardner Poetry Award and Golden Poppy Award nominee and Trouble the Water (BOA Editions, 2016) selected by Mary Szybist for the A. Poulin Jr, Poetry Prize. His debut collection was honored as a finalist for the 2017 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, the 2017 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry, the 2017 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry and the 2017 Norma Faber First Book Award. His first chapbook, Black Sand, will be released by Foundlings Press in February 2022.

Keith S. Wilson is an Affrilachian Poet and a Cave Canem fellow. He is a recipient of an NEA Fellowship, an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant and an Illinois Arts Council Agency Award and has received both a Kenyon Review Fellowship and a Stegner Fellowship. Additionally, he has received fellowships or grants from Bread Loaf, Tin House and the MacDowell Colony, among others. His book, Fieldnotes on Ordinary Love (Copper Canyon), was recognized by the New York Times as a best new book of poetry.

‍

This program is presented in partnership with the San Francisco Public Library. It will be hosted in-person at the Main Library African American Center Exhibit Space, located at 100 Larkin Street San Francisco, CA 94102.

‍