The Wilkes University English Department will open the Allan Hamilton Dickson Spring Writers Series with guest artist Brionne Janae at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 25, in the Kirby Hall Salon, 202 South River Street, Wilkes-Barre.
Janae is a Brooklyn-based poet and educator. Janae is the author of three poetry collections, including their most recent collection, Because You Were Mine, which was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Poetry. A previous collection, Blessed Are the Peacemakers, was the recipient of the Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize. Their debut collection was titled After Jubilee.
Janae’s work has been featured in Best American Poetry (2022), Ploughshares, the American Poetry Review, the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, the Sun Magazine, Jubilat and Waxwing among others. Janae was a 2023 NEA Creative Writing Fellow, and is an alum of the literary nonprofit Hedgebrook.
Janae will perform a reading of their poems, followed by a question and answer session. The event is free and open to the public.
The series features writers and scholars, from across all genres and backgrounds, as they come to campus to present readings from their works and participate in question and answer sessions with the audience.
Upcoming speakers in the series include internationally-renowned fiction author Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah on Wednesday, March 25, and literary scholar Lauren Klein on Tuesday, April 14.
For more information, visit wilkes.edu/dickson.