Brooklyn Poets Spring Intern Showcase

Join us at 144 Montague Street for our Spring Intern Showcase on Friday, May 2nd at 7 PM as interns from our winter-spring cohort read their work! Readers will include Karen Xu, Martyna Miller, Paloma Saint-Denis Lopez, Stella Gleitsman, Tyler Exum and Zoe Wallace. Free and open to the public, the event will also be livestreamed via Zoom. Doors will open at 6:30 PM for in-person guests.

Advance online registration for in-person attendance will end at 5:30 PM on the day of the event. After that, attendees can walk in at the door until we reach capacity; tickets for virtual attendance will be available until the start of the readings at 7 PM. A Zoom link will be emailed to all ticket holders at approximately 5:30 PM and again when the readings begin at 7 PM. Closed captions will be available for the event through the Zoom livestream. For more information and to request additional accommodations, contact us at bkp@brooklynpoets.org.

Note that by participating, you agree to abide by our code of conduct and COVID-19 policy. All in-person attendees are required to wear masks (regardless of vaccination status) except readers at a safe distance on stage, and 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.

Featuring

Karen Xu is a Chinese American writer and poet from North Carolina, currently based in New York City. Passionate about the intersection between public health, social justice, and the arts, she believes poetry and storytelling are important means for collective remembering, community building, and social advocacy. Karen's poems often relate to holistic healing, dreams, and the ocean. In her free time, you might find her running, reading a memoir, or taking care of plants.

Martyna Miller is a poet and writer based in Brooklyn, NY. As a first-generation American, their work explores intergenerational trauma, the immigrant experience, queerness, and the complexities of mother-daughter relationships. Poetry began as a way to survive, helping them process grief, identity, and life-altering diagnoses. Martyna is working on a poetry manuscript about the immigrant mother-daughter dynamic and a fiction project reimagining William Blake’s The Book of Thel. When not writing, they enjoy playing guitar and caring for their aquariums. They graduated from Brooklyn College with degrees in Creative Writing and Linguistics. Their work has appeared in college-run publications such as the Junction Magazine and Stuck In The Library, as well as Writing in a Woman’s Voice and the San Diego Poetry Annual.

Paloma Saint-Denis Lopez is a poet from Puerto Rico and Brooklyn. They studied poetry at Bennington College and have worked in indie publishing. You can find their work in Splashland Magazine, 100 Subtexts, and forthcoming in Washington Square Review.

Stella Gleitsman is a poet and artist from the Lower East Side of New York, currently studying writing at Pratt. In their free time, they do work for ABC No Rio's Zine Archive and Paper Thirst Zines. Their poetry is influenced by the legacy of Lower East Side poetry, and has been published in Gandy Dancer, Chaotic Merge and Anti-Heroin Chic.

Tyler Exum is a NYC-native writer, playwright, and filmmaker exploring themes of Black femme representation and identity. Her Substack, 𝓑lack 𝓢pagh𝓮tti ༄, is a space where she rediscovers the beauty and absurdities of being at the intersection of Black femme identities—and all the greys in between. Tyler is the founder and editor of Post No Bills, a literary maga(zine) prioritizing queer Black and brown voices of New York City. Tyler’s work is intended to celebrate the intersections of art, culture, city life...and rebellion.

Zoe Wallace is a word lover raised in the Philadelphia area and housed in Brooklyn. Convinced she was a rock in a past life, her work has been shaped into an interrogation on human life. That is to say, how do we come together and feel our emotions to the fullest? How do we live in a way that makes us proud? How do we persist and how do we love? She explores potential answers through beloveds, accepting the call of insanity, everyday conundrums turned absurd, vengeful witchcraft, as well as ways in which the grotesque can be made even more repugnant. Always, there is a conversation with the past and future, with ancestors and descendants, as an attempt to stand witness to our present humanity. Her work is heavily informed by her commitment to social advocacy and community building, forever seeking a way forward.

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 email feedback@brooklynpoets.org, which will send your message to everyone on the Conduct Committee noted below, or if you’d prefer you can contact anyone listed individually and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.

Executive Director r kay: kay@brooklynpoets.org
Board President Eugenia Leigh: eugenia.leigh@gmail.com
Board Co-Vice-President Miller Oberman: miller.oberman@gmail.com