BRATTLEBORO-Three poets will read and discuss their work at “Better Off Read: It’s About Time,” Friday, Nov. 13, from 5 to 7 p.m. at The Garage, 22 High St.
Described in a news release as “an evening of trans literature and conversation,” the event will feature Nico Amador, Cameron Awkward-Rich, and Stephanie Burt.
Originally from San Diego, Amador is currently based in Vermont and Provincetown, Massachusetts. His poetry draws on his career as a community organizer and “is interested in acts of radical imagination, place, and belonging,” the release said.
Amador’s chapbook, Flower Wars, which won the 2016 Anzaldúa Poetry Prize, “explores histories ... in an attempt to reconcile the contradictions in the author’s experience as queer, trans and Latinx,” according to his website.
Awkward-Rich is a professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst and the author of three poetry collections.
His most recent collection, An Optimism, “offers a rich portrait of Black trans life during a dangerous political moment,” according to its publisher, Persea Books. An Optimism won the Massachusetts Book Award in 2026.
Burt is a poet, literary critic, and professor at Harvard University as well as the author of 14 books.
These include Taylor’s Version: The Musical and Poetic Genius of Taylor Swift and the anthology Super Gay Poems: LGBTQIA+ Poetry After Stonewall, which won the 2025 New England Book award.
Soup and bread will be available at the event, which is a collaboration of Out in the Open, Everyone’s Books, and Brooks Memorial Library and was funded by the Brattleboro Town Arts Fund.
This Arts item was submitted to The Commons.