Christopher Kondrich, Lillian-Yvonne Bertram and Lindsay Bernal: TREAD UPON

TREAD UPON, out from Copper Canyon Press, explores the the social, political, religious, and economic drivers behind the chronic devaluation of the living world. In poems that sprawl from suburbia to the Southern Ocean, from the Cape Fear River to the phones in our hands, Kondrich juxtaposes the intimate with the epic, integrating climate research and reporting to ask the question: What is the price of our (in)actions and who must pay the cost?

Kondrich will be joined by Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, the National Book Award-longlisted author of NEGATIVE MONEY (Soft Skull) and Lindsay Bernal, author of the National Poetry Series-winning WHAT IT DOESN'T HAVE TO DO WITH (University of Georgia Press).

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Christopher Kondrich is a poet whose third book, Tread Upon, will be published by Copper Canyon Press in April 2026. He is also the author of Valuing (University of Georgia Press, 2019), selected by Jericho Brown as a winner of the National Poetry Series, by Library Journal as a Best Poetry Book of 2019, and as a finalist for The Believer Book Award. His poems have appeared widely in such venues as The Atlantic, The Believer, The Kenyon Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, New England Review, The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry London, and The Yale Review, and have received fellowships from MacDowell, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Yaddo. He is also the co-editor of Creature Needs: Writers Respond to the Science of Animal Conservation and an associate editor for 32 Poems. He is currently Poet-in-Residence for the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at the University of Maryland.

Lillian-Yvonne Bertram is an African American writer, poet, artist, and educator whose poetic practice includes the intersection of computation, AI, race, and gender. They are the author of Travesty Generator (Noemi Press), a book of computational poetry longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Poetry. They are the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship. Their other poetry books include How Narrow My Escapes (DIAGRAM/New Michigan), Personal Science (Tupelo Press), a slice from the cake made of air (Red Hen Press), and But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise (Red Hen Press). Their most recent full length poetry book, Negative Money, was published in 2023. Their chapbook, written with AI, is called A Black Story May Contain Sensitive Content and won the 2023 Diagram/New Michigan chapbook contest. They direct the MFA in creative writing program at the University of Maryland and are a 2024 Foundation for Contemporary Arts poetry grant recipient and 2024 Deutsch Foundation Ruby’s Grant recipient. They are co-editor with Nick Montfort of the recently released anthology Output: An Anthology of Computer-Generated Text, 1953-2023.

Lindsay Bernal is the author of What It Doesn't Have to Do With (University of Georgia Press, 2018), winner of the National Poetry Series. Poems from her second manuscript appear in Chicago Review, the Georgia Review, the Hopkins Review, New England Review, Oversound, and other journals. She coordinates the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Maryland, where she also co-directs the Writers Here & Now reading series and teaches undergraduate poetry workshops and courses on poetics.

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