Words Like Blades: Richard Siken, Jennifer Sperry Steinorth, & Justin Wymer

Richard Siken, Jennifer Sperry Steinorth, & Justin Wymer will read on Zoom as part of the "Words Like Blades" reading series, hosted by Jennifer Franklin, Jane Huffman, Nathan McClain, and Ren Wilding. A Q&A will follow. Admission is free, but registration is required. Registered guests will receive a Zoom link and password prior to the start of the event. Registered guests will have the opportunity to send donations directly to the readers (to be split three ways) before, during, and after the event via Venmo or PayPal. This event will be held on Thursday, June 25 from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. eastern time (ET).

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Richard Siken is a poet and painter. His book Crush won the 2004 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, selected by Louise Glück, a Lambda Literary Award, a Thom Gunn Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His other books are War of the Foxes (Copper Canyon Press, 2015) and I Do Know Some Things (Copper Canyon Press, 2025), which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Siken is a recipient of fellowships from Lannan Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Jennifer Sperry Steinorth’s books include Boys Behind Glass (TRP, 2026), A Wake with Nine Shades (TRP, 2019), and Her Read, A Graphic Poem (TRP, 2021), recipient of the Texas Institute of Letters’ Fred Whitehead Award and a Foreword Reviews Prize in Poetry. An interdisciplinary artist and licensed builder, she lectures at the University of Michigan, spins the O is for Octopus substack & is the biographer of CD Wright.

Justin Wymer is a poet, nonfiction and cross-genre writer, and educator. Born and raised in southwestern West Virginia, he holds degrees from Harvard University; the Iowa Writers' Workshop; and the University of Denver, where he studied creative writing and literary arts with a focus on trauma studies, queer stylistics, and literature of excess and difficulty. Wymer's debut full-length collection, DEED, won the 2018 Antivenom Poetry Award, chosen by Jennifer Franklin, and was published by Elixir Press in 2019. His second poetry collection, Let the Forest Go: Poems, is forthcoming from University Press of Kentucky in June 2026. He lives and teaches in Tennessee.

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About the series: During this dark time for the country & the world, poets and scholars Jennifer Franklin, Jane Huffman, Nathan McClain, and Ren Wilding have come together with the goal to gather once a month to listen to poets read their new work as an act of refuge and an act of resistance. Our series is founded on James Baldwin's belief that, "You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can’t, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world... If you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it." The four curators plan to pair a diverse group of established poets & emerging poets (with new or recent collections) and, when possible, focus on Mentors and Mentees reading together to calm, center, and inspire activism and positive change. At its core, this series will focus on inclusivity and celebrating connections.