An Afternoon of New Poetry with Alan Felsenthal, Charles O. Hartman, Ellen Kombiyil, & Alessandra Lynch (In Person at HVWC)

Alan Felsenthal’s second collection, Hereafter was listed as one of the most anticipated books of 2024 in Publisher’s Weekly. He is also the author of Lowly (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2017). His writing has appeared in BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, and The New York Times Magazine. He is the co-editor of A Dark Dreambox of Another Kind: The Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton (The Song Cave, 2013) and the editor of Bookworm: Conversations with Michael Silverblatt (The Song Cave, 2023). He teaches poetry at NYU Tandon School of Engineering.

Charles O. Hartman has published eight poetry collections, including Downfall of the Straight Line (Arrowsmith Press, 2024); New & Selected Poems (Ahsahta Press, 2008); and Island: Poems (Ahsahta Press, 2004). He has also translated the work of Yannis Ritsos and maintains those translations in an online archive. His poetry has also appeared in numerous anthologies, including In Like Company: The Salt River Review & Porch Anthology (MadHat Press, 2015), edited by James Cervantes. Additionally, Hartman has published a textbook, Verse: An Introduction to Prosody (Wiley, 2015), and three books of critical prose: Free Verse: An Essay on Prosody (Princeton University Press, 2014); Virtual Muse: Experiments in Computer Poetry (Wesleyan University Press, 2011); and Jazz Text: Voice and Improvisation in Poetry, Jazz, and Song (Princeton University Press, 1991). He coedited with Pamela Alexander, Martha Collins, and Matthew Krajniak, a volume on poet Wendy Battin, titled Wendy Battin: On the Life & Work of an American Master (2020), for the Unsung Masters Series. Hartman is the Lucy Marsh Haskell ’19 Professor of English at Connecticut College, where he has taught since 1990. He is the cofounder with Battin of the Contemporary American Poetry Archive (CAPA), where out-of-print volumes of poetry are preserved online and can be accessed free of charge by anyone with Internet access.

Ellen Kombiyil is the author of Histories of the Future Perfect (2015), and a micro chapbook Avalanche Tunnel (2016). Her new book, Love as Invasive Species, will be released by Cornerstone Books in 2024. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in New Ohio Review, Nimrod, North American Review, and Ploughshares. She is a 2022 recipient of a BRIO Award (Bronx Recognizes Its Own) from the Bronx Council on the Arts, a two-time winner of the Mary M. Fay Poetry Award from Hunter College, a recipient of an Academy of American Poets college prize, and was awarded the Nancy Dean Medieval Prize for an essay on the acoustic quality of Chaucer’s poetics. A graduate of the University of Chicago and Hunter’s MFA program, she currently teaches writing at Hunter College.

Alessandra Lynch’s most recent collection of poetry, Pretty Tripwire, was published in 2021. She is also the author of three other poetry collections: Sails the Wind Left Behind, It was a terrible cloud at twilight, and Daylily Called It a Dangerous Moment (winner of the Balcones Prize, finalist for the LA Times Book Award and the UNT Rilke Prize, listed as a NY Times top ten poetry books of 2017). Her work has appeared in the American Poetry Review, The New England Review, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and other journals. Alessandra has received residencies from MacDowell, Yaddo, the Lannan Foundation, and the Vermont Studio Center, and she has been the recipient of a Barbara Deming Award and a Creative Renewal Fellowship Award. She has also been a featured blogger for the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Books. Currently, Alessandra serves as Butler University’s poet in residence where she teaches in the undergraduate and MFA programs. She has collaborated with musician Earl Townsend, composer Harriet Steinke, painter Richard Rosenblatt, and artist Carlos Rodriguez-Mendez. Alessandra’s fifth book of poetry, Wish Ave, will be published by Alice James Books in 2024.