Next Year’s Words: A New Paltz Reader’s Forum

Join us for the 6th program of our 10th season at Next Year’s Words, a New Paltz Literary Forum, on Wednesday, April 17, 2024, at 7:30 at Elting Memorial Library, 93 Main Street, New Paltz, New York 12561. We anticipate a wonderful celebration of the written word with our esteemed, nationally known poets.

The featured readers for this community celebration of words at the library are Marie Howe, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, and Jessica Cuello. There will also be an open mic, and we look forward to hearing your words.

The forum is free of charge, and all are welcome in person or via Zoom. For further information, contact Susan Chute, the host of Next Year’s Words at readandlisten@npnextyearswords.org.

Marie Howe has just published her New and Selected Poems (2024). Other poetry books are Magdalene (2017), long-listed for the National Book Award; The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (2009), a finalist for The Los Angeles Book Prize; What the Living Do (1998); and The Good Thief (1998), selected by Margaret Atwood for the 1987 National Poetry Series. In 1995, she co-edited the anthology, In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic. From 2012-2014 Marie served as Poet Laureate of New York State and is a Chancellor of the American Academy of Poets.

Rachel Eliza Griffiths, a poet, photographer, and novelist, is a recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem Foundation, Kimbilio, and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Her debut novel, Promise (Random House), was published in 2023. Griffiths’ recent hybrid collection of poetry and photography, Seeing the Body (W.W. Norton, 2020), was  selected as the winner of the 2021 Hurston/Wright Foundation Award, the 2021 Paterson Poetry Prize, and a finalist for the NAACP Image Award in Poetry. Other poetry collections include Lighting the Shadow, Mule & Pear, and The Requited Distance.

Jessica Cuello published her most recent book, Yours, Creature in 2023. Her book Liar, selected by Dorianne Laux for The 2020 Barrow Street Book Prize, was honored with The Eugene Nassar Prize, and The CNY Book Award. Cuello is also the author of Hunt (2017) and Pricking (2016). Cuello has been awarded the 2022 Nina Riggs Poetry Prize, two CNY Book Awards, the 2016 Washington Prize, the New Letters Poetry Prize, a Saltonstall Fellowship, and the New Ohio Review Poetry Prize. She is poetry editor at Tahoma Literary Review and teaches French in Central New York.