Jessica Cuello’s most recent book is Yours, Creature (JackLeg Press, 2023). Her book Liar, selected by Dorianne Laux for The 2020 Barrow Street Book Prize, was honored with The Eugene Nassar Prize, The CNY Book Award, a finalist nod for The Housatonic Book Award, and a longlist mention for The Julie Suk Award. Cuello is also the author of Hunt (2017) and Pricking (2016). Cuello has been awarded The 2022 Nina Riggs Poetry Prize, The 2016 Washington Prize, The New Letters Poetry Prize, and The New Ohio Review Poetry Prize. In 2014 she was awarded The Decker Award from Hollins University for outstanding secondary teaching. She is poetry editor at Tahoma Literary Review and teaches French in CNY.
Mary McLaughlin Slechta grew up in a tiny world carved out of New England by southern African-Americans and Jamaicans. She is the 2021 recipient of the Kimbilio National Fiction Prize. The winning collection, Mulberry Street Stories, was published by Four Way Books September 2023. She has previously published The Spoonmaker’s Diamond, a game-book style novel (Night Owl Press), and a poetry collection, Wreckage on a Watery Moon (FootHills). A Pushcart nominee, recipient of the Charlotte and Isidor Paiewonsky Prize from The Caribbean Writer, and two-time poet-in-residence at the Chautauqua Institution, she is a Kimbilio Fellow and editor with great weather for Media after a long career in education.
This event will take place ONLINE AND IN-PERSON at the Downtown Writers Center. Register Now.