Authors Kathy Fagan, David Baker, and Shelley Wong read from their new books and share observations, commonalities, and intersections of their work. Fagan’s new book, Bad Hobby, focuses on memory, class and might-have-beens. Shelley Wong’s debut book, As She Appears, foregrounds queer women of color in their being and becoming. Baker’s eleventh collection, Whale Fall is about time, measured in the wingbeats of a hummingbird or the epochs of geological change, and about place, whether a backyard in Ohio or the slopes of a melting glacier.
The books are available for sale in the Wex Store and a signing with the authors follows the conversation. Free for all audiences (RSVP requested), RSVP here. This event will also be streamed to wexarts.org
About the Speakers
Kathy Fagan’s fifth poetry collection, Sycamore (Milkweed, 2017), was a finalist for the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Award and her new book with Milkweed, Bad Hobby, is out September 2022. Fagan’s work has appeared in venues such as The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Poetry, The Nation, The New Republic, Kenyon Review, The Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day and Best American Poetry. The recipient of grants from the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Ohio Arts Council and the NEA, Fagan is co-founder of the MFA Program at The Ohio State University where she teaches poetry and co-edits the Wheeler Poetry Prize Book Series for The Journal and OSU Press.
Shelley Wong is the author of As She Appears (YesYes Books, spring 2022), winner of the 2019 Pamet River Prize. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, Kenyon Review and New England Review. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships and awards from Kundiman, MacDowell, Headlands Center for the Arts and Vermont Studio Center. She holds an MFA from the Ohio State University and lives in San Francisco.
David Baker has lived and worked in central Ohio for nearly 40 years. His new book of poems, Whale Fall, appeared this summer (2022) from W. W. Norton; he is author or editor of 18 other books of poetry and prose about poetry. For his work he has received many honors, including fellowships and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, Poetry Society of America, the National Endowment for the Arts, Ohio Arts Council, Society of Midland Authors and the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Foundation. A resident of Granville, Baker continues to teach literature and creative writing at Denison University and served as Poetry Editor of The Kenyon Review for more than 25 years.
Cosponsored by the Ohio State Department of English.
