Part Two of the Seventh Annual Alumni Poetry Reading Series, organized by Timothy Donnelly, features CJ Evans, Jennifer Franklin, Rodney Terich Leonard, and Emily Simon. 

CJ Evans ’08 is the author of Lives, selected by Victoria Chang for the 2021 Kathryn A. Morton Prize from Sarabande Books, A Penance (New Issues Press, 2012), and a chapbook, The Category of Outcast, selected by Terrance Hayes for a Poetry Society of America chapbook fellowship. He’s the editor in chief of Two Lines Press, a publisher of international literature in translation, and lives in the Bay Area.

Jennifer Franklin ’96 is the author of three poetry collections, including If Some God Shakes Your House (Four Way Books, March 2023). She is the recipient of a 2021 NYFA/City Artist Corps grant for poetry and a 2021 Café Royal Cultural Foundation Literature Award. She teaches craft workshops in Manhattanville’s MFA program and manuscript revision at the Hudson Valley Writers Center, where serves as Program Director. 

Rodney Terich Leonard ’18 is the author of Sweetgum & Lightning (Four Way Books, 2021). His second poetry collection, Another Land of My Body, is also forthcoming from Four Way Books. Born & bred in Alabama, he currently resides in Manhattan.

Emily Simon ’21 is a writer and teacher living in New York City. She is the author of In Many Ways (Winter Editions, 2023) and the chapbook Reign is Over (Choo Choo Press, 2021). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Florida Review, Salt Hill, and Some Kind of Opening. She is a graduate of the Columbia University Writing Program in poetry.