Event Description
Porter Square Books: Boston Edition and GrubStreet are delighted to present the latest installment of the Grubbie Debut event series, featuring Derek JG Williams! Join us for a celebration of his debut poetry collection Reading Water on Wednesday, May 7 at Porter Square Books: Boston Edition (50 Liberty Dr. Boston, Ma 02210). Poet Angie Mazakis will join Williams in conversation, and the author talk will be followed by a signing line.
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ABOUT READING WATER
Reading Water is the winner of the Lightscatter Press Prize, chosen by Eduardo Corral (2024). The book considers the elements that make us who we are, and love that’s born then bound by the bonds of family and friends. Its poems undertake a restless search for a self under constant evolution, and are threaded together by images of water’s ephemerality—what happens above and below its surface.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Derek JG Williams is an American writer and the author of Reading Water, selected by Eduardo Corral as the winner of the 2023 Lightscatter Press Prize, and Poetry Is a Disease (Greying Ghost, 2022). His poems and prose are published in Pleiades, The Writer’s Chronicle, Plume, Banshee, Salamander, Best New Poets, and Prairie Schooner, among others. He earned a doctorate in English and Creative Writing from Ohio University, and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He lives in Zurich with his family.
Angie Mazakis’s first book, I Was Waiting to See What You Would Do First was chosen by Billy Collins as a finalist for The Miller Williams Prize, published by University of Arkansas Press, and named one of the Best Books of 2020 by The Boston Globe. Her poems have appeared in The New Republic, Boston Review, The Iowa Review, The Rumpus, Columbia Journal, Washington Square Review, Mizna and forthcoming in the anthology Heaven Looks Like Us: Palestinian Poems. Her essays have been published in The Atlantic and Gulf Coast. She has an MFA from George Mason University and a PhD from Ohio University.
This class will take place in-person at our Center for Creative Writing in Boston's Seaport neighborhood.
Covid-19 Update:
GrubStreet's space will be mask-optional when Boston's Covid-19 Community Level is low or medium. When the Covid-19 Community Level is high, our space will require masks. Please check GrubStreet's Covid-19 page for the latest info on masking and Community Levels before visiting in person.
Space Accessibility:
Our space is ADA accessible with automatic door openers, ADA-compliant restrooms, desk and table spacing, braille signage, and elevator. Our classrooms can be equipped with ALS for hard of hearing individuals. We cannot guarantee a scent-free environment. For more accessibility requests, please contact our Operations team at [email protected] or (617) 695-0075.