Poetry Reading With Michael Dumanis, James Hall, & Chet'la Sebree
Bird in Hand is delighted to host James Allen Hall, Chet’la Sebree, and Michael Dumanis for an evening of poetry! This remarkable array of poets all have recent award-winning collections, which we’re looking forward to celebrating in community together.
James Allen Hall is the author of 3 books, including the poetry collections Now You’re the Enemy (2008) and Romantic Comedy (2023, selected by Diane Seuss for the Levis Prize), and a book of lyric personal essays, I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well (2017). They have received awards and fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, Lambda Literary Foundation, the Texas Institute of Letters, the Fellowship of Southern Writers, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the University of Arizona Poetry Center, and the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences. With Aaron Smith, James co-hosts the popular poetry show Breaking Form: A Podcast of Poetry & Culture. They direct the Rose O’Neill Literary House at Washington College, where they also edit the national literary journal Cherry Tree.
Chet’la Sebree is the author of Field Study, winner of the 2020 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, and Mistress, a 2020 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work-Poetry nominee. For her work, Chet’la has received fellowships from Baldwin for the Arts, the Delaware Division of the Arts, the Hawthornden Foundation, Hedgebrook, the Hermitage Artist Retreat, MacDowell, the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, the Stadler Center for Poetry, the Vermont Studio Center, and Yaddo, where she received the 2018 National Endowment for the Arts Residency for Collaborative Teams. Currently, she is an assistant professor at George Washington University and faculty in the Low-Residency MFA program at Randolph College.
Michael Dumanis is the author of two books of poems, Creature (Four Way Books, 2023), a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award; and My Soviet Union (University of Massachusetts Press), winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry. He is also the co-editor of the anthology Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century (Sarabande). Born in the former Soviet Union, he emigrated to the United States at the age of five. He holds a BA from the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars, an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a PhD from the University of Houston. He lives in North Bennington, Vermont, and teaches at Bennington College, where he is a member of the Literature faculty and the MFA Creative Writing faculty, and also serves as editor of Bennington Review.
