The Writer’s Center welcomes poet Carolyn Joyner for a reading from her debut collection, Imagine His Mother Witnessing. Carolyn is joined in conversation by poets Joseph Ross and Abdul Ali.
FREE & open to the public. RSVP below.
Carolyn Joyner is the author of Imagine His Mother Witnessing (2026) which considers themes of loss, an epic battle with illness, mother-son deep bonds, and the sustaining power of art through our darkest hour. Joyner is a former WritersCorps instructor, volunteer poetry workshop leader for the DC Public Library and River of Words community project, and holds a Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing from The Johns Hopkins University. She is a Cave Canem and Hurston-Wright Foundation fellow, and has been awarded fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA).
Joseph Ross is the author of five books of poetry. Most recently, Crushed & Crowned (2023), Raising King (2020), and Ache (2017). His poems appear in many publications including, The New York Times Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, Poet Lore, The Langston Hughes Review, and the 2022 anthology, WHERE WE STAND: Poems of Black Resilience. He has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations and won the 2012 Pratt Library / Little Patuxent Review Poetry Prize for his poem “If Mamie Till Was the Mother of God.” Recently, Ross served as judge for the 2021 Ken Ebert Poetry Prize from Iris G. Press. He currently serves on the editorial team of The Skinny Poetry Journal and on the Poetry Advisory Committee at the Folger.
Abdul Ali—poet, writer, scholar, and nonprofit professional—is currently a doctoral student in American Studies at the University of Maryland. Mr. Ali is the founder and principal of The Ali Consultancy that provides strategy, project management, and capacity building from a storytelling lense. Mr. Ali has held distinguished teaching appointments at Johns Hopkins University, Howard University, and Goucher College. He is the recipient of the 2019 Ruby Grant, from the Robert Deutsch Foundation. His debut collection of poems, Trouble Sleeping, won the 2014 New Issues Poetry Book Prize.
If you need an accommodation for this event, please contact us at access@writer.org. We will attempt to fulfill all requests, but advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility services.
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