Alexandra Lytton Regalado, Jen Karetnick and Catherine Esposito Prescott

Alexandra Lytton Regalado: Matria: Poems

“Truly remarkable poetry draws new connections between the emotional, physical, and psychological landscapes our lives move through. This is especially true of MATRIA, a stunning collection by Alexandra Lytton Regalado, who moves us among and between the intersections of motherhood and childhood, womanhood and country- hood. With arresting language full of grace and empathy, these poems dimension the uidity and complexity of these relationships as both witness and the witnessed, mother and child, native and foreigner, in both English and Spanish.”—Richard Blanco

About the Author:

Alexandra Lytton Regalado’s poetry collection, Matria, is the winner of the St. Lawrence Book Award (Black Lawrence Press, 2017). Her poems, stories, and non-fiction have appeared in Narrative, Gulf Coast, The Notre Dame Review, and Creative Nonfiction among others and her work has been anthologized in The Best American Poetry 2018, Misrepresented People (NYQ Books, 2018), The Wandering Song (Tia Chucha Press, 2017), and others. Co-founder of Kalina publishing, Alexandra is author, editor, and/or translator of more than ten Central American-themed books including Puntos de fuga / Vanishing Points: Contemporary Salvadoran Prose (2017). She is the winner of the 2015 Coniston Poetry Prize and she was the recipient of the third Letras Latinas / PINTURA PALABRA DC Ekphrastic residencies. Her ongoing photo-essay project about El Salvador, through_the_bulletproof_glass, is on Instagram. For more info visit: www.alexandralyttonregalado.com

Jen Karetnick: The Treasures the Prevail 

The Treasures That Prevail is about climate change and its effects on Miami; the poems in this collection confront the ills of modern society in general, mourn both public and personal losses, and predict the difficulties of a post-modern life in a flooded, Atlantis-like lost city. The narrators are two unnamed women, married with a teenage daughter and a teenage son, who live in a part of Miami that will be underwater unless action is taken. The Treasures That Prevail is a parable about what could happen to any of our low-lying coastal cities if we don’t start to make changes now.

About the Author:

Jen Karetnick is the author/co-author/editor of 16 books, including seven poetry collections, the most recent of which is The Treasures That Prevail (Whitepoint Press, September 2016), finalist for the 2017 Poetry Society of Virginia Book Prize. The winner of the 2017 Hart Crane Memorial Poetry Contest, the 2016 Romeo Lemay Poetry Prize and the 2015 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Prize, she has had work nominated for Pushcart Prizes and Best of the Net awards. Her work has appeared recently or is forthcoming in Amuse-Bouche/Lunch Ticket, Crab Orchard Review, Cutthroat, Measure, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Missouri Review, New Millennium Writings, One, Painted Bride Quarterly, Spillway, Verse Daily and Waxwing. She is co-founder/co-curator of the not-for-profit organization, SWWIM (Supporting Women Writers in Miami), and co-editor of the daily online literary journal, SWWIM Every Day.

Catherine Esposito Prescott: Maria Sings

One Maria, Two Maria, Three Maria, Four

One Maria orders decaf, the others cafe con leches. One Maria speaks Portuguese, another Italian, another Spanish, another English. One Maria left  her firstborn son in Peru. Another Maria was infertile until her fifth IVF treatment. One Maria has a boy and a girl. One Maria has a dog she calls Baby Girl. One Maria waves to you in the park, the other always looks away. One Maria once knew a man who grew a butterfly in his chest. One Maria hiked the Andes with her true love. One Maria eloped, her belly swollen like a papaya. One Maria was the first in her family to go to college . Two Marias are lawyers. One Maria has a PhD. All the Marias are bilingual. One Maria believes in a higher being. The others are not so sure. One Maria prays to Santa María for her husband  to return safely from Cuba. One Maria prays to Santa  María for her husband to be taken in the next huracán.  One Maria finds a lump in her right breast. Another Maria finds two in her left. Two Marias have a biopsy;  one flies 1,100 miles for a double mastectomy. One Maria is healthy. One Maria is overweight. One Maria practices yoga. The other Maria never saw it coming. One Maria lost her madre, her tía, her abuela to the same  disease. One Maria laughs out loud. The other Maria  has a laugh that flutters in her chest. One Maria
cries herself to sleep. One Maria feasts on pomegranate seeds believing they will heal her. Another Maria  buys Maria cookies, wolfs down the entire sleeve  with a glass of red wine and dreams herself to sleep.

About the Author:

Catherine Esposito Prescott is the author of the chapbooks Maria Sings (dancing girl press, 2017) and The Living Ruin (Finishing Line Press, 2012). Her poems have appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, MiPOesias, Pleiades, Poetry East, Rattle, Southern Poetry Review, The Orison Anthology, and elsewhere. Prescott earned an MFA in Creative Writing—Poetry from New York University, and she’s a cofounder of SWWIM, which curates a reading series and publishes work by women, women-identifying, and femme-presenting writers. She lives in Miami Beach with her husband and three children.