An Evening with Chet'la Sebree at Huxley & Hiro

Huxley & Hiro is thrilled to host poet Chet'la Sebree for a conversation about her latest poetry collection, Blue Opening. Moderated by Dr. Traci Currie, it promises to be an evening of insight and inspiration!

Book Description:

Blue Opening, Chet’la Sebree’s brilliant, illuminating poetry collection, grapples with origins—of illness, of language, of the universe—as the speaker contemplates whether she, too, can be a site of origin through motherhood. Navigating chronic health challenges alongside grief and questions about the nature of knowledge and religion, she searches personal history and the cosmos for answers to the unknowable.

With startling clarity and vivid tenderness, Blue Opening calls into question not only where to begin, but how to create, across thirty-two poems that press the fluid boundaries of form through sonnets, prose poems, odes, and two unforgettable poetic sequences. As the speaker traverses loss, possibility, and the choice, or often the lack of choice, in the direction of her future, she determines to press forward even as she is “unsure of what shape this language should take / and hulling, from blue rock, faith.”

About the Author:

Chet'la Sebree is the author of the poetry collections Blue Opening (Tin House), Field Study, winner of the 2020 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, and Mistress. Raised in the mid-Atlantic, she earned an MFA in creative writing, with a focus in poetry, from American University. Chet’la’s poetry and prose have appeared in Colorado Review, Kenyon Review, Lit Hub, Pleiades, Guernica, Poetry International, and The Yale Review. Currently, Chet’la is an assistant professor of English at George Washington University and teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Randolph College. Her debut essay collection is forthcoming from The Dial Press in 2026.

About the Moderator:

Dr. Traci Evadne Currie is a Jamaican American poet who currently serves as Delaware's State Coordinator for the national arts education program, Poetry Out Loud, as well as an Assistant Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Goldey-Beacom College. She has been in the Communication Studies field for over 20 years as a spoken word artist, mixed media artist-activist, multi-disciplinary facilitator, and youth arts program director.

Books will be available for purchase and signing at the event.

All Ages

Free Entrance, Registration Required

Host or Publisher Huxley & Hiro