Palm Beach Poetry Festival Returns This Month To Delray Beach

Susan R. Williamson, Director of the Palm Beach Poetry Festival (PBPF), today announced that the 16th annual festival returns to Old School Square this month for six days of literary workshops and public events, including readings, talks, interviews, panel discussions and more, January 20-25.

The current United States Poet Laureate, Joy Harjo is an award-winning Native American poet and musician from Oklahoma, who has also been named a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poet. Her books of poetry include Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems, She Had Some Horses and An American Sunrise. Her memoir Crazy Brave won several awards, including the PEN USA Literary Award for Creative Non-Fiction and the American Book Award.

At the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, Harjo, a renowned musician, will be interviewed by faculty poet Laure-Anne Bosselaar, and will deliver the annual Thomas Lux Memorial Reading following the festival gala.

Patricia Smith is the author of eight books of poetry, including Incendiary Art, winner of the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award the 2017 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the 2018 NAACP Image Award, and was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize. She is a Guggenheim fellow, a National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient, a finalist for the Neustadt Prize, a two-time winner of the Pushcart Prize, and a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam, the most successful poet in the competition's history.

During the Palm Beach Poetry Festival 2020, Patricia Smith will appear for a special evening reading on January 24, and will present to high school students throughout Palm Beach County during festival week.

"The Palm Beach Poetry Festival is once again offering a nationally recognized, world-class learning opportunity with more than a dozen of America's most engaging and award-winning poets in Delray Beach," says Ms. Williamson. "In addition to our workshops, the Festival brings the voices of America's most beloved living poets to the Crest Theatre stage. We work hard to present a diverse group of poetic voices, each expressing in their poems what we sometimes find inexpressible."

The Workshop Faculty for the Festival will include distinguished poets Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Nickole Brown/Jessica Jacobs, Reginald Gibbons, Major Jackson, Ilya Kaminsky, David Kirby, Dana Levin, Adrian Matejka, and Maggie Smith. One-on-One Conference Faculty includes Lorna Knowles Blake, Sally Bliumis-Dunn, and Angela Narciso Torres.

Tickets to Palm Beach Poetry Festival public events are $15 each, $12 for seniors, and $10 for students. They are available for purchase online at www.oldschoolsquare.org.