The Writer’s Center welcomes poet Geraldine Connolly and poet Nancy Naomi Carlson for a reading from their new collections, Instructions at Sunset and translation of French Djiboutian poet, novelist, and essayist Abdourahman A. Waberi collection When We Only Have the Earth, respectively. These wonderful poets will be in conversation with Natasha Sajé.

FREE & open to the public. RSVP below.

Geraldine Connolly was born in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. She earned a B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh and and an M.A. from the University of Maryland. For seven years she served as co-editor of the literary quarterly, Poet Lore. She is author of a chapbook, The Red Room, and four full-length poetry collections: Food for the Winter (Purdue), Province of Fire (Iris Press), Hand of the Wind (Iris Press) and  Aileron, published by Terrapin Books in 2018. Her new book, Instructions at Sunset is forthcoming in July 2025.

Nancy Naomi Carlson won the 2022 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. Author of 16 titles (11 translations), her work has been noted in the NEW YORK TIMES. A recipient of grants from the NEA, she was decorated by the French government with the Academic Palms and was a finalist for the Sarah Maguire Translation Prize and the CLMP Firecracker Poetry Award. Her translation of GESTUARY (Seagull Books, 2026) by French-Senegalese writer Sylvie Kandé, is forthcoming. Carlson is the Translations Editor for On the Seawall.

Natasha Sajé is the author of five books of poems, including The Future Will Call You Something Else (Tupelo, 2023). Her prose books are Windows and Doors: A Poet Reads Literary Theory (Michigan, 2014) and a memoir-in-essays, Terroir: Love, Out of Place (Trinity, 2020). Her honors include the Robert Winner and the Alice Fay di Castagnola Awards from the Poetry Society of America; a Pushcart prize; a Fulbright Scholarship to Slovenia; a Camargo Fellowship in France; Lambda, IPPY, Foreword, and Pen Finalist prizes. Sajé is Professor Emerita of English at Westminster University in Salt Lake City, and has been teaching in the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing Program since 1996. She lives in Washington, DC.

About the Books

Instructions at Sunset: Geraldine Connolly‘s Instructions at Sunset instructs us about why we love poetry—the sensuality evoked throughout by the warmth of the sun, the scent of underbrush, and the simmer of dinner on the stove—images gifted us so we also live these rare moments. And surprises, too, when Connolly’s noticing transforms suddenly into meaning, and we draw a breath. Many poets rely on “the pain-of-the-past” for deep feelings, but this is a book about the present, the startling brilliant present, caught exactly as it happens, for the reader to know the splendor of living in the best possible air.

When We Only Have the Earth: In this ode to the earth and all its living creatures, French Djiboutian poet, novelist, and essayist Abdourahman A. Waberi sounds the alarm about our imperiled planet, where “the Sahel rises in you, in me / the Red Sea boils in you, in me / Nunvut is melting in you, in me.” This translation by Nancy Naomi Carlson preserves the rich musicality of the original French, as well as its frequent use of wordplay and often unusual word choice. Waberi, a nomad at heart, takes us on a whirlwind tour across North America, Africa, and Europe, daring us to love the earth “beyond all rational thought” and to “turn into earth, both literally and figuratively,” as we “turn from vanity, fears, and other pointless rustling.” These lyrical, playful, and moving poems urge us to look for the truth and beauty hidden in our daily lives, singing of Waberi’s own enduring love for our endangered planet and also, more forcefully, exhorting us to join him in the collective fight to save our planet from destruction.

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