Erika Meitner will read from her newest poetry collection, Assembled Audience, and Writers' Workshop graduate Kiki Petrosino will read from her newest poetry collection, Perfect Italian.

Described by publisher Milkweed Editions as a collection that "explores what it means to be human in an increasingly precarious world," Erika Meitner's Assembled Audience is praised by bestselling poet Camille T. Dungy as "a tour de force to treasure. With sharp attention and bright wit, Erika Meitner’s poems gather the good, the bad, and the ugly of our present day and refine what’s assembled into pure and splendid glory."

Kiki Petrosino's Perfect Italian is described by publisher Sarabande Books as a collection that "examines the complexities of cultural inheritance, the nuances of language, and the emotional weight of diasporic identity as a Black and Italian American." Perfect Italian is praised by Gregory Orr, author of Selected Books of the Beloved, as "a lyric exploration alive with nuance and urgency and a sense of purpose: who am I who am descended both from American slaves and immigrants from a tiny Italian village who settled in Brooklyn, then Baltimore where I was born?" He continues with: "In poems alive to the primal wisdom that language is the heartbeat of consciousness, we encounter songs of a self recording its significant journeys as it struggles to discover, reclaim, and praise the terms of its being through identities of language and birth — citizenship and barrier and abundance."

Erika Meitner is the author of seven books of poems, including Ideal Cities (HarperCollins, 2010), which was a 2009 National Poetry series winner; Copia (BOA Editions, 2014); Holy Moly Carry Me (BOA Editions, 2018), which won the 2018 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry, and was a finalist for the Library of Virginia Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry; and Useful Junk (BOA Editions, 2022), which was a finalist for the Wisconsin Library Association Literary Award in poetry. Her newest book, Assembled Audience, is due out from Milkweed Editions in September 2026.

Kiki Petrosino is the author of several poetry collections which include Perfect Italian (2026) White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia (2020), Witch Wife (2017), Hymn for the Black Terrific (2013), and Fort Red Border (2009), and the memoir Bright (2022) all published by Sarabande Books. She holds graduate degrees from the University of Chicago and the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop. She is a Professor of Poetry at the University of Virginia where she teaches in the MFA and undergraduate Creative Writing programs. Petrosino is the recipient of a DeWitt Wallace/Readers Digest fellowship from MacDowell artist residency, a Pushcart Prize, a Fellowship in Creative Writing from the National Endowment for the Arts, the UNT Rilke Prize, & the Spalding Prize, among other honors.

_{To subscribe to a weekly emailing list of Writers' Workshop events, please fill in the linked form.
Readings at Prairie Lights are sponsored by the Writing University.}