18th Annual PALM BEACH POETRY FESTIVAL Returns Virtually January 2022

Susan R. Williamson, Director of the Palm Beach Poetry Festival (PBPF), today announced that the 18th annual festival will be all-virtual for six days of literary workshops, readings, craft talks, one-on-one conferences, poet panel, and more, January 10-15, 2022.

"We went virtual for the first-time last January due to the pandemic, and in 2022 it will be because Old School Square is undergoing extensive renovations," says Williamson. "Fortunately for poetry lovers everywhere, we've discovered how to create community with poets in the virtual setting-and there's no travel expense, no lodging cost, just world class, award-winning poets experienced and enjoyed live from the comfort and safety of your own home."

Applications to participate in the 18th annual Palm Beach Poetry Festival workshops are available online at palmbeachpoetryfestival.submittable.com. A full schedule and workshop descriptions are also available on the festival's website.

The Thomas Lux Memorial Event with

Special Guest Poet 2022: Yusef Komunyakaa

A recipient in 1994 of both the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the Louisiana-born Yusef Komunyakaa has a unique style that the Poetry Foundation describes as "vernacular speech layered with syncopated rhythms from jazz traditions." Most recently named the winner of the 2021 Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Achievement Award, his published books of poetry include Dedications & Other Darkhorses, Copacetic, Warhorses, Thieves of Paradise, Testimony: A Tribute to Charlie Parker, and Gilgamesh: A Verse Play. A member of the prestigious Fellowship of Southern Writers, Komunyakaa has taught at numerous institutions including the University of New Orleans, Indiana University, and Princeton University, and he serves as Distinguished Senior Poet at New York University's graduate creative writing program.

Poet At Large 2022: Aimee Nezhukumatathil

A winner of both a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pushcart Prize, Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of The New York Times best-selling illustrated collection of nature essays and Kirkus Prize finalist, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, & Other Astonishments. She has four previous poetry collections: Oceanic, Lucky Fish, At The Drive-in Volcano and Miracle Fruit. In 2021 she became the first-ever poetry editor for SIERRA magazine, the story-telling arm of The Sierra Club. In addition, she is professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Mississippi's MFA program.

Virtual Faculty Poets 2022

"The Palm Beach Poetry Festival is once again offering a nationally recognized, world-class learning opportunity with some of America's most engaging and award-winning poets, all done virtually," says Ms. Williamson. "In addition to our workshops, the Festival brings together the voices of America's most beloved living poets, a truly diverse group of poetic voices, each expressing in their works what most people find inexpressible."

The Workshop Faculty and Topics of the 2022 Palm Beach Poetry Festival will include:

+ Kim Addonizio / Surprise Me

The author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, the most recent poetry collection by Kim Addonizio is Now We're Getting Somewhere, and her memoir-in-essays is Bukowski in a Sundress. She has received NEA and Guggenheim Fellowships, Pushcart Prizes in both poetry and the essay, and her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Poetry, The Sun, the Times Literary Supplement (UK), and numerous literary journals. Visit her at https://www.kimaddonizio.com.

+ Laure-Anne Bosselaar / Okay, Wait. Let Me Rephrase This

The most recent poetry collection by Laure-Anne Bosselaar is These Many Rooms. She also is the author of The Hour Between Dog and Wolf and Small Gods of Grief, which was awarded the Isabella Gardner Prize for Poetry. Her third poetry collection, A New Hunger, was selected as an ALA Notable Book in 2008. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, and her poems have appeared in The Washington Post, Georgia Review, Ploughshares, AGNI, Askew, Miramar, and many others. The editor of four anthologies, she taught poetry at Emerson College, Sarah Lawrence College, and UCSB.

+ Chard deNiord / Writing the Other

The author of seven books of poetry including In My Unknowing, Interstate, The Double Truth, and Night Mowing, Chard deNiord is also the author of two books of interviews with eminent American poets: Sad Friends, Drowned Lovers, Stapled Songs, Conversations and Reflections on 20th Century Poetry and I Would Lie To You If I Could. Professor Emeritus of English and Creative Writing at Providence College, he served as poet laureate of Vermont 2015-2019.

+ Mark Doty / Unscrew the Locks from the Doors: Writing New Poems

The author of the nine collections of poetry, including Deep Lane, Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems, and My Alexandria, which won both the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry, Mark Doty is also the recipient of a 1994 Whiting Award, a 1994 Guggenheim Fellowship for Humanities, the T.S. Eliot Prize, and three Lambda Literary Awards for Gay Men's Poetry. He has published three memoirs, and currently serves as Distinguished Professor of English and Director of Writers House at Rutgers University.

+ Yona Harvey / Reading Between the Lines: The Art of Time Bending

The author of the poetry collections You Don't Have To Go To Mars for Love, winner of the Believer Book Award, and Hemming the Water, winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, poems by Yona Harvey have been published and anthologized in many publications including Letters to the Future: black women : radical writing and A Poet's Craft: A Comprehensive Guide to Making and Sharing Your Poetry. She contributed to Marvel's World of Wakanda and co-authored with Ta-Nehisi Coates Black Panther and the Crew. Her website is www.yonaharvey.com.

+ John Murillo / Gimme the Loot: Learn to Steal Like a Poet

The author of the poetry collections Up Jump the Boogie, a finalist for both the Kate Tufts Discovery and the Pen Open Book Awards and Kontemporary American Poetry, winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry and the Poetry Society of Virginia's North American Book Awards and finalist for the Pen/Voelcker Award for Poetry and the NAACP Image Award, John Murillo has received numerous honors including the Four Quartets Prize from the T.S. Eliot Foundation and the Poetry Society of America, two Larry Neal Writers' Awards, a pair of Pushcart Prizes, the Poetry Foundation's J Howard and Barbara MJ Wood Prize, an NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, Cave Canem Foundation and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing.

+ Matthew Olzmann / Unpacking the Mysteries of Revision

The author of two collections of poems, Mezzanines, which was selected for the 2011 Kundiman Prize, and Contradictions in the Design, the third book by Matthew Olzmann, Constellation Route, is being published next January. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Kundiman, MacDowell, and the Kresge Arts Foundation, huis work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Pushcart Prize XLV, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Southern Review, and elsewhere. He is now a Senior Lecturer of Creative Writing at Dartmouth College and also teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

+ Diane Seuss / Positively Negative: Developing Mystery in Poems Via Negative Capability

The most recent collections by Diane Seuss include frank: sonnets, Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry, and Four-Legged Girl, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She was a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow and a recipient of the 2021 John Updike Award from the Academy of American Arts and Letters.

One-on-One Conference Faculty includes Lorna Knowles Blake, Sally Bliumis-Dunn, Nickole Brown, Jessica Jacobs, and Angela Narciso Torres. The one-on-one conferences are also available to individuals who are not enrolled in a workshop this year.

How to Apply for PBPF's Virtual Workshops

The deadline to apply for the 2022 Palm Beach Poetry Festival is November 15, 2021. Application forms are available online at www.palmbeachpoetryfestival.org, where detailed workshop descriptions and faculty biographies can also be found.

Tuition for workshops is $895 and includes 16 hours of virtual workshop instruction; admission to all festival events, including a ticket to attend the festival gala. Applicants may reserve an optional one-hour, one-on-one conference to be confirmed upon notification of acceptance.

Tuition for Auditors is $495 and includes virtual observation of the workshops and receive all handouts under discussion.

Applications require a $25 non-refundable application fee plus a $250 tuition deposit. Tuition balances are due upon acceptance to a workshop.

About the Palm Beach Poetry Festival 2022:

The all-virtual 18th annual Palm Beach Poetry Festival will be held January 10-15, 2022. The Festival is generously sponsored by Art Works of the National Endowment for the Arts, Morgan Stanley, The Legacy Group of Morgan Stanley's Atlanta, GA office, the Cultural Council for Palm Beach County, The Tourist Development Council of Palm Beach County; the Board of Commissioners of Palm Beach County, The Palm Beach Post, a grant from Visit Florida, WLRN-FM, and Murder on the Beach, Delray Beach's independent bookseller.

In 2010, the Palm Beach Poetry Festival received an Arts Challenge Grant from The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; and in 2011, it was presented with The Muse Award for Outstanding Cultural Organization (with a budget under $500,000) by the Cultural Council of Palm Beach County.

For more information about the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, please visit www.palmbeachpoetryfestival.org.

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