Jennifer Egan, Maggie Siff, Ocean Vuong and More at 92Y in May

92Y's Unterberg Poetry Center will present readings and conversations featuring acclaimed actors, authors and poets in May, including: Pulitzer Prize-winner Jennifer Egan, Ocean Vuong, as well as Maggie Siff, Eisa Davis and Tracy K. Smith, among others. Complete details are below.

OCEAN VUONG AND QUAN BARRY

***In-Person and Online***

Monday, May 2, 7:30, From $15

Ocean Vuong-a poet and novelist whose previous works include Night Sky with Exit Wounds and On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous-now publishes Time is a Mother, his second book of poems. "It is a haunting, inconsolable, and at the same time playful, generous in spirit, tender, and inimitable book," wrote Ilya Kaminsky. Quan Barry-a poet and novelist whose previous works include Loose Strife and We Ride Upon Sticks-now publishes When I'm Gone, Look for Me in the East , her third novel. "It is excellent and immersive, a full-throated plunge into a very specific, fascinating world," wrote Lit Hub. "Technically about twin brothers on a quest to find the reincarnation of a famous lama

JENNIFER EGAN AND DON LEE

***In-Person and Online***

Thursday, May 5, 7:30 pm, From $20

Jennifer Egan's new novel is The Candy House, a "sibling" novel to her Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad. "Twisting through myriad points of view, narrative styles, and divergent voices, Egan proves herself as perceptive an interpreter of the necessity of human connection as ever, and her vision is as irresistible as the tech she describes," wrote Publishers Weekly.Don Lee's new book of stories is The Partition . "It is flat-out brilliant: a witty, kaleidoscopic tear through questions of race and identity in America today by a writer who has wrought luminous fiction from these issues for years," wrote Jennifer Egan.

LUCILLE CLIFTON'S GENERATIONS:

A READING BY Eisa Davis,
AND A CONVERSATION WITH
TRACY K. SMITH

***In-Person and Online***

Monday, May 9, 7:30 pm, From $20

Who remembers the names of slaves? Only the children of slaves.

Acclaimed actor, playwright and musical performer Eisa Davis (Bulrusher, Angela's Mixtape, Passing Strange) reads from Lucille Clifton's classic family memoir, Generations, upon its re-release by New York Review Books. Originally published in 1976, Generations is a powerful work of prose by a great American poet. "Lucille Clifton uses the occasion of her father's funeral to attest to the lives lived and the marks made by the generations of people she descends from. First they are names, dates, and places," writes Tracy K. Smith, in her introduction to the new edition. "Once named, these kin arrive not singly, but en masse, brought to life through the rhythm and inflection of voices. Clifton has teased out these lives, allowing them to demand their rightful place, to command our full attention, to teach us things about themselves and ourselves."

Davis's reading will be followed by a conversation with Smith, former U.S. Poet Laureate and the author of Such Color: New and Selected Poems.

Anne Carson'S "THE GLASS ESSAY"
A READING BY Maggie Siff

***In-Person and Online***

Thursday, May 12, 7:30 pm, From $20

Whenever I visit my mother / I feel I am turning into Emily Brontë, / my lonely life around me like a moor...

Acclaimed actor Maggie Siff (Billions, Mad Men) performs a reading of Anne Carson's classic poem, "The Glass Essay."

"Read 'The Glass Essay'-a poem richer than most novels nowadays. See how in its utter clarity of narration it weaves and conflates one theme with another, how it works in the Brontës as daimons to preside over the poem and to haunt it, how it tells two strong stories with Tolstoyan skill," wrote Guy Davenport. "This is a boldly new kind of poem. Anne Carson's powers of invention are apparently infinite."

DISCOVERY POETRY CONTEST:
WINNERS' READING

***In-Person and Online***

Thursday, May 19, 7:30 pm, Free, Tickets Here

92Y's Discovery Poetry Contest has long recognized the exceptional work of poets who have not yet published a book. Many of these writers-John Ashbery, Mark Strand, Lucille Clifton, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Mary Jo Bang, and Solmaz Sharif, among others-have gone on to become leading voices of their generations.
Join us for this free reading with the winners of this year's contest: Jada Renée Allen, Sasha Burshteyn, April Goldman and Kristina Martino.

This year's preliminary judges were Timothy Donnelly and Sumita Chakraborty. Victoria Chang, Brian Teare and Phillip B. Williams served as final judges.

MARTIN ESPADA AND
RAQUEL SALAS RIVERA

***In-Person and Online***

Friday, May 27, From $15

Martín Espada's latest book of poems, Floaters, won the 2021 National Book Award. "Espada has long established himself as one of our most prolific and important poets, his body of work a canon unto itself," wrote John Murillo. "Along with his trademark blend of gravitas, humor, and raucous imagination, [in Floaters] we get an Espada more vulnerable, a voice more intimate than any we've heard from him before.

Raquel Salas Rivera's new collection is antes que isla es volcán (before island is volcano). Wrote Daniel Borzutsky: "Since the tertiary, one of the most important books of our time, Raquel Salas Rivera has been documenting-with acuity, and clarity, and beauty-the colonial hole, creating life-giving books, in multiple languages, and channeling multiple universes, to gift us the words we need as we ward off the nations they send to kill us."

For more information, visit www.92Y.org