In-Store: Couplet Reading Series

Event guidelines:

• Additional copies of the readers' books will be available for purchase at the event.
• A signing will follow the readings.
• The event will be livestreamed for free online here: https://youtube.com/live/enGCefv97J0
• Home address is collected for contact tracing purposes; it will not be used otherwise.
• As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event, even if you have a ticket; email us and we'll work it out.

If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact [email protected].

It's the first Couplet Reading Series of 2026! Fight off the winter blues with an evening of poetry, community, and creativity at Books Are Magic.

Couplet is a quarterly reading series curated and hosted by Leah Umansky since 2011, featuring emerging and established poets.

Nicole Cooley grew up in New Orleans and is the author of seven books of poems, most recently MOTHER WATER ASH (LSU Press 2024) as well as the forthcoming TRASH (Alice James Books 2027). She teaches in the MFA program in creative writing and literary translation at Queens College, CUNY.

Rebecca Hart Olander is a Women's National Book Association Poetry Award winner and the author of three poetry collections: Dressing the Wounds (a chapbook from dancing girl press, 2019), Uncertain Acrobats (CavanKerry Press, 2021), a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award in Poetry and the Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry, and Singing from the Deep End (CavanKerry Press, 2026). Rebecca has taught writing at Amherst and Smith colleges, at Westfield State University, and through Pioneer Valley Writers’ Workshop, and she works with poets in the Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing. She is the editor/director of Perugia Press.

Major Jackson is the author of Razzle Dazzle: New & Selected Poems and the inaugural recipient of the Patricia Cannon Willis Prize for American Poetry from Yale Library. A recipient of fellowships from Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, and John S. Guggenheim Foundation, he is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University.

Keetje Kuipers’ fourth collection of poetry, Lonely Women Make Good Lovers, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and was recommended by Ron Charles for the Washington Post Book Club. Her poetry and prose have appeared in BOMB, the New York Times Magazine, and Poetry, and have been honored by publication in the Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies. Keetje has been a Stegner Fellow, NEA Literature Fellow, and the Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Resident. Previously a VP on the board of the National Book Critics Circle and a tenured Associate Professor at Auburn University, Keetje currently teaches at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and the dual-language writers conference Under the Volcano in Tepoztlán, Mexico. Keetje is Editor of Poetry Northwest, and lives with her wife and children in Montana.

Wayne Miller is the author of six poetry collections, most recently The End of Childhood (Milkweed, 2025). His awards include fellowships from the NEA and the Poetry Foundation, as well as the UNT Rilke Prize, two Colorado Book Awards, two Pushcart Prizes, six individual awards from the Poetry Society of America, and a Fulbright to the Seamus Heaney Centre in Northern Ireland. He has co-translated two books by Moikom Zeqo—most recently Zodiac (Zephyr, 2015)—and he has co-edited three books, most recently Literary Publishing in the Twenty-First Century (Milkweed, 2016). He teaches at the University of Colorado Denver, co-directs the Unsung Masters Series, and edits Copper Nickel.

Devon Walker-Figueroa is the author of Lazarus Species (Milkweed Editions, 2025) and Philomath (Milkweed Editions, 2021), a winner of the National Poetry Series and a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle award. A former Amy Lowell Scholar and a current assistant professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University, Devon's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Nation, New York Review of Books, and elsewhere.

Leah Umansky is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently, OF TYRANT (Word Works Books 2024.) She earned her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and has curated and hosted The COUPLET Reading Series in NYC since 2011. She is the creator of the STAY BRAVE Substack which encourages women-identifying creatives to inspire other women-identifying creatives to stay brave in their creative pursuits. Her creative work has been featured on PBS and The Slowdown Podcast, and in such places as The New York Times, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A Day, USA Today, POETRY, Bennington Review, and American Poetry Review. She is an educator and writing coach who has taught workshops to all ages at such places as Poetry School London, Poets House, Hudson Valley Writers Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering and elsewhere. She is working on a fourth collection of poems ORDINARY SPLENDOR, on wonder, joy and love. She can be found at www.leahumansky.com

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