Watershed Reading Series

media release: Join us on Saturday, March 16, 2024 at 7:00 PM for our March Watershed Reading featuring Ae Hee Lee, Jessica Q. Stark, and Cynthia Marie Hoffman. Lee, Stark, and Hoffman will be reading from their newest poetry collections. Lee will be reading from Asterism. Stark will be reading from Buffalo Girl. Hoffman will be reading from Exploding Head, a memoir in prose poems about her lifelong history with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

Born in South Korea and raised in Peru, Ae Hee Lee is the author of ASTERISM, selected by John Murillo for the 2022 Dorset Prize, and the poetry chapbooks Bedtime || Riverbed (Compound Press 2017), Dear bear, (Platypus Press 2021), and Connotary (Frost Place Chapbook Competition Winner – Bull City Press 2021).

Ae Hee is a Just Buffalo Literary Center Fellow, Adroit Journal Gregory Djanikian Scholar, recipient of the James Olney Award by The Southern Review, and Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship Finalist. She has also received scholarships and honors from the Academy of American Poets, AWP, Bread Loaf, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, among others.

Jessica Q. Stark is the author of Buffalo Girl (BOA Editions, 2023), a finalist for the Maya Angelou Book Award, Savage Pageant (Birds, LLC, 2020), and four poetry chapbooks, including INNANET (The Offending Adam, 2021). Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Pleaides, Glass Poetry Journal, The Southeast Review, among other publications. She is a Poetry Editor at AGNI and is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of North Florida. Find out more at https://jessicaqstark.com/.

Cynthia Marie Hoffman is the author of four collections of poetry: Exploding Head, Call Me When You Want to Talk about the Tombstones, Paper Doll Fetus, and Sightseer, all from Persea Books. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and the Wisconsin Arts Board. Poems have appeared in Electric Literature, The Believer, Image, Smartish Pace, The Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Madison, WI. Her website is www.cynthiamariehoffman.com.