Please join us for a reading and conversation with poets Caryl Pagel and Lauren Shapiro, to celebrate the release of their new books, Out of Nowhere Into Nothing and Arena.
To join this virtual event, register here.
Hanif Abdurraqib, author of Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest says of Caryl Pagel's new book: "I appreciate Out Of Nowehere Into Nothing for how gently and generously it cares for the flawed and faulty machine of memory. Pagel is a thoughtful and skilled storyteller, weaving together narratives in a way that centers itself on trust and reliability. Reading this book was like hearing from an old friend, and having all of your favorite recollections painted back in."
Lauren Shapiro's Arena is an Editor's Choice for the 2019 CSU Poetry Center Open Book Competition. Suzanne Buffam says of the book, “Keen-witted, caustic, and resolutely dry-eyed, these poems register a collective alarm in which private grief and global dread converge ‘at the pace of adrenaline.’”
Caryl Pagel is the author of two books of poetry and an essay collection, Out of Nowhere Into Nothing (FC2, 2020). She is the co-founder of Rescue Press, a poetry editor at jubilat, and the director of the Cleveland State University Poetry Center. Pagel teaches poetry and nonfiction in the NEOMFA program in northeast Ohio.
Lauren Shapiro is the author of Arena (CSU Poetry Center, 2020), and Easy Math (Sarabande, 2013), which was the winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize and the Debut-litzer Prize for Poetry. With Kevin González, she co-edited The New Census: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry (Rescue Press, 2013). She is an associate professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University.