Saturday, June 26, 2021
In 2021, The Green Room LIVE – an online version of our beloved Green Room arts and ecology series – was envisioned as a response to the Covid-19 crisis. In our third event in this series, The Merwin Conservancy welcomed award-winning poet Jericho Brown, who read from his three books of poetry, including his most recent The Tradition (Copper Canyon Press, 2019), for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. The reading is followed by a discussion with The Merwin Conservancyʻs executive director Sonnet Coggins, and includes questions from the online audience.
The Green Room LIVE Spring 2021 series was made possible thanks to The Merwin Conservancy’s Green Room Patrons and the Atherton Family Foundation. This series also included a partnership with da Shop: books + curiosities in Honolulu.
ABOUT OUR GUESTS:
Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. His new poem, Be Holding, was released from the University of Pittsburgh Press in September of 2020. His collection of essays, The Book of Delights, was released by Algonquin Books in 2019.
Ross is also the co-author, with Aimee Nezhukumatathil, of the chapbook “Lace and Pyrite: Letters from Two Gardens,” in addition to being co-author, with Rosechard Wehrenberg, of the chapbook, “River.” He is a founding editor, with Karissa Chen and Patrick Rosal, of the online sports magazine Some Call it Ballin’, in addition to being an editor with the chapbook presses Q Avenue and Ledge Mule Press. Ross is a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a non-profit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project. He also works on The Tenderness Project with Shayla Lawson and Essence London. He has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Ross teaches at Indiana University.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the New York Times best-selling author of WORLD OF WONDERS: IN PRAISE OF FIREFLIES, WHALE SHARKS, & OTHER ASTONISHMENTS, finalist for the Kirkus Prize in non-fiction, and recently named the Barnes and Noble Book of the Year. She is also the author of four books of poetry, and is poetry editor of SIERRA, the national magazine of the Sierra Club. With Ross Gay, she co-authored LACE & PYRITE, a chapbook of poems about their respective gardens. Awards for her writing include a fellowship from the Mississippi Arts Council, Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for poetry, National Endowment of the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. She is professor of English and Creative Writing in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program.
