An Evening with Catherine Esposito Prescott and Caridad Moro-Gronlier

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In September 2022, Prescott’s son, Austen, was diagnosed with DIPG–a rare, inoperable, and nearly-universally fatal brain cancer. He left the body on August 3, 2023 at the age of 18. The work in Superbloom spans the time from about six months prior to Austen’s diagnosis to about six months after his passing. Unlike other books which confront grief, Superbloom doesn’t become burdened by it. Here, there are moments of levity, humor, and transcendence from suffering. Here, grief isn’t quicksand; it is an eddy, then a portal.

In Through the Lens, Caridad Moro-Gronlier redefines ekphrasis for a visually saturated world, expanding her poetic gaze beyond the image to include the objects, spaces, texts, and moments that shape our cultural and personal landscapes. These poems do more than describe—they interrogate, interpret, and reflect, treating each subject as a living, dynamic presence. Moro-Gronlier invites the reader to slow down, look again, and reconsider how meaning is made. This genre-defying collection dismantles the frame and reframes the familiar, challenging not only what we perceive, but the very structures that teach us how—and what—it means to see.

Originally from Long Island, New York, Catherine Esposito Prescott is the author of four poetry collections, including Superbloom (Gunpowder Press, forthcoming in January 2026), Accidental Garden (Gunpowder Press, 2023, winner of the Barry Spacks Poetry Prize), Maria Sings (dancing girl press, 2017), and The Living Ruin (Finishing Line Press, 2012). Recent work appears in The American Poetry Review, Colorado Review, Josephine Quarterly, MER VOX, NELLE, Painted Bride Quarterly, Pleiades, Stirring: A Literary Collection, Tahoma Literary Review, Verse Daily, and West Trestle Review. Her unpublished collection, How We Disappear (formerly titled We Were Never Here and My Sweet Atlantis), was a finalist for Michigan State University’s Wheelbarrow Books Prize, The St. Lawrence Book Award (Black Lawrence Press), and the Texas Review Press Southern Poetry Breakthrough Prize, and a semi-finalist for the Hilary Tham Capitol Collection competition (The Word Works). Prescott earned an MFA in Creative Writing—Poetry from New York University.

Caridad Moro-Gronlier is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship (2025) for her work as Poet Laureate of Miami-Dade County (2024–2026). She is the author of Visionware (2009), Tortillera (2021), Through the Lens (2026) and As to Your Comment forthcoming in 2027 from Texas Review Press. She serves as Senior Editor for SWWIM Every Day and Poetry Curator-at-Large for The Betsy’s Writer’s Room. In 2025, she was named a National Book Award judge in Poetry. Her work appears in The Slowdown, Verse Daily, NPR, and elsewhere. She lives in Miami with her family.

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