October 11 – Oliver de la Paz and Jonathan Aibel – in person

Oliver de la Paz is the author and editor of seven books. His newest work, The Diaspora Sonnets, published by Liveright Press in 2023, was long listed for the National Book Award and is the winner of the 2023 New England Book Award. A recipient of grants and awards from the NEA, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Artist Trust, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, his work has appeared in journals like Virginia Quarterly Review, North American Review, Tin House, Poetry, and in anthologies and periodicals such as Asian American Poetry:  The Next Generation and in the New York Times. In 2023 he was appointed as the Poet Laureate of Worcester, MA. He is a founding member of Kundiman and he teaches at the College of the Holy Cross and in the Low-Residency MFA Program at Pacific Lutheran University.

Jonathan B. Aibel is a poet and recovering software engineer. He was raised in Westport, Connecticut (Paugussett), but he lives in Concord, MA, lands where traditionally the Nipmuc, Pawtucket, Agawam and Massachusett people met. His works are published in many journals, including JAMA, Barrellhouse, Chautauqua, Lily Poetry Review, The Inflectionist, and Pangyrus, and have been anthologized by Massachusetts Bards, Gnashing Teeth Press and Local Gems Press. He has read for the Chapter and Verse series and the Brookline Poetry Series. His poems have been featured on the West Concord Poetry phone. His chapbook Echoes of Uruk was a semi-finalist for the Tupelo Press Snowbound Prize (2024). The Porcelain World is his first full-length collection.