Poet of the Week

Francis de Lima is a Finnish-Brazilian poet and translator, currently living in the UK. They are completing their undergrad at Royal Holloway, focusing on the intersections between class, ecology, and poetry. They’ve collaborated extensively, mainly with Finnish underground artists, on projects like art books, albums, and performances at venues ranging from concert halls to backyards.

Leigh Sugar is a Michigan-based artist. Poetry and other work appears in POETRY, Split This Rock, jubilat, and more. A disabled and chronically ill writer, Leigh holds an MFA in poetry from NYU and an MPA in Criminal Justice Policy from John Jay College, and has taught writing at CUNY's Institute for Justice and Opportunity, NYU, various prisons in Michigan, and other settings. Leigh edited the anthology That's a Pretty Thing to Call It: Prose and poetry by artists teaching in carceral institutions (New Village Press, 2023), and her debut poetry collection, FREELAND, is forthcoming (Alice James Books, 2025).

Todd Dillard's work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Guernica, Fairy Tale Review, The Adroit Journal, Best New Poets, Waxwing, and elsewhere. His debut collection Ways We Vanish (Okay Donkey Press) was a finalist for the 2021 Balcones Poetry Award. His chapbook Ragnarök at the Father-Daughter Dance is forthcoming from Variant Literature. He is a Poetry Editor for The Boiler Journal. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, two kids, and works as an editor and writer for a hospital.

Carey Salerno is the executive director and publisher of Alice James Books. She is the author of Shelter (2009) and Tributary (2021). Her third collection of poems, The Hungriest Stars, is forthcoming with Persea Books. She serves as the co-chair for LitNet: The Literary Network and occasionally teaches poetry and publishing arts at the University of Maine at Farmington. In 2021, she received the Golden Colophon Award for Independent Paradigm Publishing from CLMP for the leadership and contributions of Alice James Books.

Halee Kirkwood is a 2023-2025 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, a Tin House Summer Workshop alumni, and an Indigenous Nations Poets (IN-NA-PO) fellow. They were awarded the 2022 James Welch Poetry Prize, published with Poetry Northwest. Kirkwood’s work can be found in Poetry Magazine,  Ecotone, Gulf Coast, and others. Kirkwood is a direct descendant of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe.

Paul Hostovsky's poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, the Muriel Craft Bailey Award, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer's Almanac, and the Best American Poetry blog. His thirteenth book of poems, Pitching for the Apostates, is just out from Kelsay Books. He makes his living in Boston as a sign language interpreter.

Réka Nyitrai is a spell, a sparrow, a lioness’s tongue—a bird nest in a pool of dusk. She is the recipient of a Touchstone Distinguished Books Award for 2020 for her debut haiku volume While Dreaming Your Dreams (Mono Ya Mono Books, 2020). Her debut full-length poetry collection, Moon flogged, will be out in September 2024 with Broken Sleep Books.

Myriam Klatt (she/her), born 1984, has published two novels with Aufbau Verlag as well as multiple fictional and non-fictional pieces in literary magazines. She only recently switched from her native German to English, focusing on poetry and creative nonfiction. She lives in Berlin, Germany.