Concord Poetry at the Library Series

As part of the Concord Festival of Authors, the Poetry at the Library Series is hosting two Massachusetts-based award-winning poets. Oliver de la Paz reads from his sixth collection, The Diaspora Sonnets (Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2023), winner of the New England Book Award in Poetry and longlisted for the National Book Award. Jill McDonough reads from her sixth collection, Amerian Treasure (Alice James Press, 2022), winner of the 2023 Housatonic Book Award and a 2023 Mass Book Award “Must Read”. The poets also will engage in conversation with the audience about the inspirations and craft that led to their collections, followed by book-signings and light refreshments.

The event will take place on Sunday, October 29 from 3:00 - 4:30 p.m. in the Goodwin Forum of the Concord Free Public Library at 129 Main Street.

Please register HERE.

Oliver de la Paz’s The Diaspora Sonnets eloquently invokes the perseverance and bold possibilities of his Filipino family as they strove for stability and belonging in America. It has been called “one of the most moving, layered reflections on diaspora and memory in American poetry.” Jill McDonough’s American Treasure chronicles the unjust systems woven into the American fabric, while celebrating those who live in spite of them. The Boston Globe calls McDonough “a poet who moves between the rough-edged, throaty way we speak, and who elevates the language so that we’re more awake to the beauty, absurdity, and possibility in this world — and our short time in it.”

Oliver de la Paz is Poet Laureate of Worcester, MA for 2023-2025. A founding member of Kundiman, Oliver serves as the co-chair of its advisory board and is on the board for Poetry Daily. He is also the author of Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby, Requiem for the Orchard, Post Subject: A Fable, and The Boy in the Labyrinth, a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry.

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 Virginia Quarterly Review, North American Review, Tin House, Poetry, and The New York Times, among others, and in anthologies such as Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation. He teaches at the College of the Holy Cross and in the Low-Residency MFA Program at Pacific Lutheran University. Learn more at https://www.oliverdelapaz.com.

Jill McDonough is the author of American Treasure (Alice James, 2022), Here All Night (Alice James, 2019), Reaper (Alice James, 2017), Where You Live (Salt, 2012), Oh, James! (Seven Kitchens, 2012), and Habeas Corpus (Salt, 2008). The recipient of three Pushcart prizes and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, and Stanford’s Stegner program, she taught incarcerated college students through Boston University’s Prison Education Program for thirteen years. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Slate, The Nation, The Threepenny Review, and Best American Poetry. She teaches in the MFA program at UMass-Boston and started a program offering College Reading and Writing in two Boston jails. Learn more at http://www.jillmcdonough.com.

This free event is generously sponsored by The Friends of the Library.