Join us for an evening with poets Ellen Doré Watson and Abe Louise Young (left to right, below).

Ellen Doré Watson is the author of five full-length collections of poems, most recently, pray me stay eager, from Alice James Books. Earlier works include Dogged Hearts, from Tupelo Press, This Sharpening, also from Tupelo, and two from Alice James Books, We Live in Bodies and Ladder Music, winner of the New England/New York award. Watson’s journal appearances include APR, Tin House, Orion, Field, Ploughshares and The New Yorker. Among her honors are a Rona Jaffe Writers Award, fellowships to the MacDowell Colony and to Yaddo, and a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship. She has translated nine volumes from Brazilian Portuguese, most notably the poetry of Adélia Prado, including The Alphabet in the Park (Wesleyan University Press), Ex-Voto (Tupelo), and, most recently The Mystical Rose, from the UK poetry publisher Bloodaxe Books. Watson serves as poetry and translation editor of The Massachusetts Review and core faculty at Drew University’s Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts in Poetry and Translation.

Abe Louise Young is a believer in the power of words, generosity and vulnerability to make meaningful change. She’s the author of three chapbooks of poetry, Heaven to Me (Headmistress Press, 2017), Ammonite (Magnolia Press Collective, 2011), and Poem for a Friend Growing Lighter and Lighter (forthcoming Spring 2019 from Dancing Girl Press). She’s also the author or editor of numerous guides for educators, including the free guide Queer Youth Advice for Educators: How to Respect and Protect Your LGBTQ Students (Next Generation Press, 2011) and Hip Deep: Opinion, Essays and Vision from American Teenagers (Next Generation Press, 2005). She was nominated as Best Activist in Austin 2017 by the Austin Chronicle for her work mobilizing hundreds of people to prevent homelessness by building personal resource-sharing networks with families displaced by Hurricane Harvey, an effort called Hurricane Love. Young holds an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a James Michener Fellow in Writing, an MA from Northwestern University and a BA from Smith College.