A Barer Sky: Reading & Book Launch with Serena Solin, Joshua Wilkerson, Latif Ba, and Kendra Sullivan
Wed, Oct 28, 2026
7:00 PM–8:30 PM
Skylight Room (9100), CUNY Graduate Center. Free and open to all.
Join us for a reading celebrating Serena Solin‘s debut full-length collection A Barer Sky, which draws on sources ranging from Dostoyevsky to Boyz n the Hood, Emerson to Olson, asking what it means to write in a world of lush and violent textuality. Moving between the pre-individual realm of infancy and the collectivity we grow into, Solin’s poems and essays shift through perspectives beyond the human — inanimate, entomological, etymological, world-historical — until tragedy shatters the world into clarity. Solin will be joined by fellow poets who will also be reading from their new books Joshua Wilkerson, Latif Askia Ba, and Kendra Sullivan, all of whom move between the world of the small press and the CUNY Graduate Center, as well as many other spheres.
About the Poets
Latif Askia Ba is a poet from Brooklyn, NY. Dancing in and out of various forms, he tries again and again to realize the music of the disabled body-mind-universe. He’s a poetry editor at Big Score and the author of The Choreic Period, published by Milkweed Editions.
Kendra Sullivan is a poet, public artist, and activist scholar. She is the Director of the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center, where she coleads the NYC Climate Justice Hub. She is the publisher of Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative and the co-editorial director of Women’s Studies Quarterly. Kendra makes public art addressing waterfront access and equity issues in cities around the world and has published her writing on art, ecology, and engagement widely. She is the co-founder of the Sunview Luncheonette, a cooperative arts venue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn; and a member of Mare Liberum, a collective of artists, activists, and boatbuilders. Her books include Reps (Ugly Duckling Presse) and Zero Point Dream Poems (Doublecross Press).
Serena Solin lives in Queens, NY. Previous chapbooks include Solar Inverter and The Stay Behind (Beautiful Days Press). Solin’s poems and essays have appeared in CutBank, Denver Quarterly, Dialogist, FENCE, Heavy Feather, Hobart Pulp, Little Mirror, Sixth Finch, Tyger Quarterly, Works & Days, and elsewhere. She is a member of the Ugly Duckling Presse editorial collective and a PhD candidate in English at the CUNY Graduate Center.
Joshua Wilkerson is the author of The Keeper, Meadowlands/Xanadu/American Dream, and a chapbook, Fume Lapse. His writing has appeared in Tagvverk, The Cleveland Review of Books, and Annulet Poetics. He co-edits Beautiful Days Press and the journal Works & Days, and is a PhD student in English at the CUNY Graduate Center.
This event is organize and hosted by the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center.
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The Environment as the Place of Poetry with Ed Roberson
Parallel Processes: Interactive Poetry Book Talk and Publishing Workshop
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Poetry Reading and Conversation with Cristina Pérez Díaz and Isabel Sobral Campos
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Translating Islands: A Reading and Conversation
Book Launch & Reading
Joint book launch of Kendra Sullivan’s <em>Reps</em> and Alan Felsenthal’s <em>Hereafter</em>
Book Launch & Reading
UDP Spring Studio Party: Readings by Cuff, Hsiung, Shams, Sullivan
