Such a special night for poetry! And on a Leap Year!

This series from Texas A & M University Press highlights different regions and their poets: “Alabama is among the most naturally dynamic states in the nation, its ecosystems ranging from Appalachian mountains, through rolling Piedmont, to the vast Gulf Shore.

In this tenth volume of The Southern Poetry Anthology, the editors have achieved a remarkable task; they have revealed another wide variegation that makes Alabama so dynamic: poets in the Yellowhammer State with both established and new voices. They have elucidated the impressive and exciting diversity of poets who consider or have considered Alabama home.”

We’re so thrilled to celebrate this anthology with readings from various local contributors. Join us!

TAYLOR BYAS (she/her) is a Black Chicago native currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she is an Associate Editor for Cincinnati Review and an Assistant Features Editor for The Rumpus. She is the 1st place winner of the 2020 Poetry Super Highway, the 2020 Frontier Poetry Award for New Poets Contests, and the 2021 Adrienne Rich Poetry Prize. She is the author of the chapbooks Bloodwarm and Shutter, and her debut full-length I Done Clicked My Heels three Times is out from Soft Skull Press. She is represented by Rena Rossner of the Deborah Harris Agency.

ADAM VINES is a professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he edits Birmingham Poetry Review. He is the author of five collections of poetry, the latest, Lures (LSU Press, 2022). He has published poems in The Southern Review, Kenyon Review, and Poetry, among other journals.