2024 Schedule

Poetry Reading Featuring this Year's Poetry Winners & Professional Poets
Thursday, March 14 at 7pm
Location:  The Writer's Center, 4508 Walsh Street

Essay & Short Story Reading Featuring this Year's Winners (Check back for full list)
Friday, March 15 at 7pm
Location: Bethesda Hyatt, 7400 Wisconsin Avenue
 

Check back soon for details on the 2024 events.

The 2023 Poetry Reading and Awards Ceremony featured readings by poets E. Ethelbert Miller, KaNikki Jakarta and Adam Chiles.

E. Ethelbert Miller is a literary activist and author of two memoirs and several poetry collections. He hosts the WPFW morning radio show On the Margin with E. Ethelbert Miller and hosts and produces The Scholars on UDC-TV which received a 2020 Telly Award. Miller serves as a board member for the DC Collaborative for Humanities and Education, The Inner Loop and Folger Shakespeare Poetry, and he is Associate Editor of The American Book Review. Miller was given a 2020 congressional award from Congressman Jamie Raskin in recognition of his literary activism, awarded the 2022 Howard Zinn Lifetime Achievement Award by the Peace and Justice Studies Association, and named a 2023 Grammy Nominee Finalist for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album. Miller’s latest book is How I Found Love Behind the Catcher's Mask, published by City Point Press..

KaNikki Jakarta whose name means “great writer” is the Inaugural Poet In Residence for Northern Virginia Fine Arts Association. She is an award-winning performance poet who has toured the United States and the United Kingdom. KaNikki is the First Black Poet Laureate of Alexandria, Virginia, a 2022 Academy of American Poet Laureate Fellow, the author of three novels, two poetry collections, a memoir, a short story, poetry collection entitled Alabama Girl, Virginia Woman and the co-author of The Ultimate Guide to Self Healing, Volume II. She is the 2021 DMV Renaissance Female Mentor of the Year. If you think that something she says on the mic might change your life, you’re probably right.

Adam Chiles‘ first collection of poems, Evening Land was nominated for the 2009 Gerald Lampert Memorial award for best debut collection in Canada. His second collection Bluff has been accepted by Measure Press and will be published in Spring 2023. His work has been anthologized in Best New Poets 2006 (Samovar) and has appeared in numerous journals including Barrow Street, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cimarron Review, Copper Nickel, Cortland Review, Connotation Press, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, The Literary Review, Magma, Permafrost, RHINO, The Threepenny Review and Thrush Poetry Review. His fellowships and scholarships include the Reginald S. Tickner Creative Writing Fellowship, a Sewanee Writers Conference and the Tennessee Williams Scholarship.