Jamaica Baldwin and Nancy Miller Gomez will read poems from their newest collections followed by a conversation and a Q&A.

About the Authors

Jamaica (she/her) is a poet and educator originally from Santa Cruz, CA. Her first book, Bone Language, was published by YesYes Books in June 2023. Her work has appeared in Guernica, World Literature Today, The Adroit Journal, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, and The Missouri Review, among others. Her accolades include a 2023 Pushcart Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a RHINO Poetry editor’s prize, a Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award, as well as the San Miguel de Allende Writer’s Conference Contest Poetry Award. Her writing has been supported by Aspen Words, Storyknife, Hedgebrook, Furious Flower, and the Jack Straw Writers program. Jamaica has a PhD from the University of Nebraska -Lincoln in English with a focus on poetry and Women’s and Gender Studies and she is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Writing at Ithaca College in New York.

Nancy Miller Gomez’s is the author of Inconsolable Objects (YesYes Books) and the chapbook, Punishment (Rattle chapbook series), a collection of poems and essays about her experience teaching in prisons and jails. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, Prairie Schooner, The Adroit Journal, TriQuarterly, New Ohio Review, Shenandoah, River Styx, Waxwing, Plume, The Rumpus, Rattle, Massachusetts Review, American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. She received a special mention in the 2023 Pushcart Prize Anthology. She co-founded with Ellen Bass an organization that provides writing workshops to incarcerated women and men and has taught poetry in Salinas Valley State Prison, the Santa Cruz County Jails, and Juvenile Hall. She lives with her family in Santa Cruz, California. More at: nancymillergomez.com.