Wilder Words Fall 2024
Thursday, October 3, 2024
6 PM (Eastern)
Join us for the next installment of Wilder Words, a quarterly virtual reading featuring the stellar faculty of the 24PearlStreet Online Writing Program. In this reading, we’ll hear from authors Kelle Groom, Airea Matthews, Emily Nemens, and Nova Ren Suma who will all join 24PearlStreet to teach in the upcoming Fall 2024 season.
This event is free and open to the public. Register here to receive the Zoom link.
About Our Readers
Kelle Groom‘s newest book is How to Live: A Memoir-in-Essays (Tupelo Press, October 2023). Her memoir, I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl (Simon & Schuster 2011 / pb 2012), is a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick, New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice selection, a Library Journal Best Memoir, Barnes & Noble Best Book of the Month, Oprah O Magazine selection, and Oxford American Editor’s Pick. Her four poetry collections are Spill, (Anhinga Press), Five Kingdoms (Anhinga), Luckily (Anhinga), and Underwater City (University Press of Florida). Her work has appeared in AGNI, American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, New England Review, The New Yorker, New York Times, Ploughshares, and Poetry, and her nonfiction and photography will be featured in Virginia Quarterly Review’s “True Story” this Fall. A National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow in Prose, Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Nonfiction, and two-time Florida Book Award winner in Poetry, Groom’s honors also include fellowships from Black Mountain Institute, University of Nevada-Las Vegas in partnership with the Library of Congress, Civitella Ranieri, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, James Merrill House, Millay Colony for the Arts, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, American Antiquarian Society, and Ucross Foundation, as well as two Florida Book Awards, a State of Florida Division of Cultural Affairs grant, and Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grant. Groom was previously Distinguished Writer-in-Residence and Assistant Professor of Humanities at Sierra Nevada College, Lake Tahoe. She has also served as Nonfiction Editor for AGNI Magazine and Poetry Editor of The Florida Review.
Airea D. Matthews is the author of two critically acclaimed poetry collections: Simulacra, which won the prestigious 2016 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award; and Bread and Circus, which won the 2024 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry. Her writing and service have earned Matthews several awards including a Guggenheim, a Pew, and a Rona Jaffe—as well as several fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, Cave Canem, and Callaloo.
Her work has appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, The New York Times, Gulf Coast, VQR, Best American Poets, American Poet, Lithub, Harvard Review, and elsewhere. She was the sixth poet laureate of Philadelphia and is currently an associate professor at Bryn Mawr College, where she was presented a Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award and, more recently, a Rossabeth Moss Kanter Change Master Fund award. She is developing an arts refuge in Troina, Sicily in her spare time.
Emily Nemens is the author of The Cactus League. Her stories have appeared in BOMB, The Gettysburg Review, n+1, and elsewhere. Emily spent a dozen years editing literary quarterlies, including leading The Paris Review, which won its first American Society of Magazine Editors’ Award for Fiction under her tenure; she also served as co-editor of The Southern Review. She held the 2022-23 Picador Professorship (University of Leipzig) and teaches community-based fiction workshops.
Nova Ren Suma is a New York Times bestselling author of young adult novels and a two-time Edgar Award finalist. Her latest YA novel A Room Away from the Wolves was an Edgar Award finalist and called “shiver-inducingly delicious” by the New York Times. Her other novels include the #1 New York Times bestselling The Walls Around Us as well as Imaginary Girls, and she was co-editor of the story & writing craft anthology FORESHADOW: Stories to Celebrate the Magic of Reading & Writing YA. She is a MacDowell fellow and a Yaddo fellow and has an MFA in fiction from Columbia University. She teaches creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania and Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her next novel is forthcoming from Algonquin in 2025.
At 24PearlStreet, we believe everyone has a story to tell, and we are here to help you tell yours. Whether you are a seasoned writer or just starting, our online writing program has something for everyone. From poetry to prose, fiction to non-fiction, our courses are designed to help you refine your craft and take your writing to the next level.
