Book Launch: Stephanie Niu

Join us for the launch of poet Stephanie Niu's debut collection of poems, I Would Define the Sun, on Saturday, March 1 at 144 Montague Street and on Zoom! Doors will open at 6 PM and readings will begin at 6:30 PM. Ashley-Devon Williamston, Arden Levine, Juliana Chang and Megan Fernandes will open for Niu. Book signing to follow.

Note that by attending this event, you agree to abide by our code of conduct and COVID-19 policy. All in-person attendees for events are currently required to wear masks (regardless of vaccination status) except readers at a safe distance on stage. We will have masks available. Brooklyn Poets reserves the right to dismiss from our programs any participant found to be in violation of these policies. Thank you for respecting our community.

About I Would Define the Sun

Stephanie Niu’s I Would Define the Sun, awarded the 2024 Vanderbilt University Literary Prize, is a collection of poems that declare the impossibility of defining something as immense as the sun while striving toward that impossible act. In an era of planetary collapse, filled with bushfires, bleached coral, and burnout, Niu explores what love can do even through estrangement, even through being together at the end of the world. Recycling and folding language through duplexes, sestinas, and echoing couplets, this collection moves across great distances to include Christmas Island, Chinese-American immigration, and the precarity and abundance of the sea through formal and lyric poetry. Expansive in scope, Niu refits the world into a size “made for [her] hands, [her] human tongue,” propelling readers into continuous motion as she searches for home.

About the Author

Stephanie Niu is a poet and writer from Marietta, Georgia. She is the author of I Would Define the Sun, which won the inaugural Vanderbilt University Literary Prize, and the chapbooks Survived By (Host Publications, 2024) and She Has Dreamt Again of Water (Diode Editions, 2022). She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

About the Opening Acts

Ashley-Devon (MFA) is a multimodal storyteller who explores the human condition. A child of the African diaspora, they are currently based in Brooklyn, NY. Their poems, collages, and interviews with other contemporary wavemakers can be found in Milk Press, the Rumpus, the African American Review, Ginger Magazine, Dinner Bell Magazine and beyond.

Arden Levine is an urban planner and public servant working in and for New York City. She is the author of Spoke (The Word Works’ Hilary Tham Capital Collection, forthcoming 2025; National Poetry Series Finalist, 2024), and Ladies’ Abecedary (Harbor Editions, 2021). Arden’s poems appear in AGNI, Barrow Street, Harvard Review, RHINO, Indiana Review and elsewhere.

Juliana Chang is a Taiwanese American poet. Her debut poetry chapbook, Inheritance, was the winner of the 2021 Vella Prize. Juliana’s work appears or is forthcoming in the American Poetry Review, the Chestnut Review, Diode Poetry Journal, Burningword Literary Magazine, Best New Poets 2023 and other publications. Her first full-length collection, So Long This Wound Stayed Open, was published with ELJ Editions in 2024.

Megan Fernandes is a South Asian American writer living in New York City. She is the author of The Kingdom and After (Tightrope Books, 2015), Good Boys (Tin House, 2020), and I Do Everything I’m Told (Tin House, 2023). She earned a Ph.D. in English from UC Santa Barbara and an M.F.A. in poetry from Boston University. Fernandes is an associate professor of English and the writer-in-residence at Lafayette College, where she teaches courses on poetry and environmental writing

COVID-19 Policy

Effective 2024, all event attendees are required to wear masks due to the current prevalence of cases in NYC. Masks will be available at the door.

The current metrics available, including NYC wastewater data and the CDC’s Respiratory Virus Activity Levels, both indicate high levels of COVID and other illnesses. While your personal risk tolerance may vary, the unmitigated spread of COVID and other respiratory illnesses disproportionately affects the most vulnerable in our community—including those who are immunocompromised or don’t have the privilege of paid sick days to heal and recover. We hope you’ll join us in taking the actions we can to make our space welcoming to all and to keep each other safe. Please stay home if you are experiencing symptoms, have a positive COVID test or someone close to you has recently tested positive.

We strongly encourage daytime visitors and workshop attendees to wear masks. Workshop instructors may choose to enforce a more stringent policy at their own discretion. Additionally, workshop participants may be required to wear masks as an accessibility accommodation for other participants.

While we do our best, Brooklyn Poets cannot guarantee zero risk. A risk of exposure to COVID-19 exists in all public settings. By entering the building, students, teachers and other attendees accept the risk of exposure and knowingly waive and release Brooklyn Poets from any liability related to COVID-19.

Brooklyn Poets Code of Conduct

Brooklyn Poets will not tolerate any instances of discrimination, harassment or abuse in conjunction with any of our programs. Respect and consideration for others, both within and outside our programs, are core values to be upheld by all participants. Discrimination against and/or harassment of community members on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, disability, national origin, religion, age, marital status, veteran status or any other factor is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. Program participants are expected to adhere to all federal, state and local laws and regulations. Should a board or staff member, independent contractor, volunteer or program participant be found to violate any aspect of the organization’s code of conduct, Brooklyn Poets reserves the right to dismiss them from the program. Consequences may include, but not be limited to, dismissal from the current activity, suspension, ineligibility for all future activities, and/or loss of payment or fees. If you have any issues to report, please do not hesitate to contact anyone on our Conduct Committee and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.

Executive Director r kay: kay@brooklynpoets.org
Board Director Miller Oberman: miller.oberman@gmail.com