ALERT—The below event has been moved to a virtual-only format because of rising COVID-19 numbers in the area. The event will now happen via Zoom at this link. The text below has been corrected to reflect this change.

Register here: Poetry Reading

Poets Paige Lewis, Komal Mathew, and Emily Spencer will present a virtual reading of their poetry on Sept. 16 for Zone 3 Press’s First Book Award Poetry Reading.

The reading is a celebration of Mathew and Spencer, co-winners of the 2020 First Book Award in Poetry. Lewis was the judge who picked them as the winners.

The reading also celebrates Mathew and Spencer’s new books. Zone 3 Press will publish Mathew’s For Daughters Who Walk Out Like Sons and Spencer’s East Walnut Hills this month.

The poetry reading will be at 7 p.m. Sept. 16 via Zoom at this link. The event is sponsored by the Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts and is free and open to the public.

You can pre-order Mathew and Spencer’s books at the Austin Peay Marketplace.

About the poets

Mathew is a graduate of Georgia Institute of Technology and Sarah Lawrence College. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Diode Poetry Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal, Crazyhorse, Narrative, and The New Republic. She is the co-founding editor of Josephine Quarterly.

Spencer earned a Master of Fine Arts from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and was a Boston University global writing fellow. Her poems have appeared in the Kenyon Review, Poetry, and Pleiades.

Lewis is the author of Space Struck and has had poems appear in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Best New Poets 2017, Gulf Coast, The Massachusetts Review, The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, and Ninth Letter.

The Zone 3 Press First Book Award in Poetry is biennial and is open again in 2022. Zone 3 awards the Nonfiction Book Award during the other years and will announce those winners later this fall. You can read more about Zone 3 and its contests at its website, www.zone3press.com.