SWWIM Poetry: Alafia Sessions & Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello

Join us for a poetry reading with Alafia Nicole Sessions and Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello at The Betsy-South Beach Library. Hosted by SWWIM as part of an ongoing series.

ABOUT ALAFIA NICOLE SESSIONS: Alafia Nicole Sessions is a black poet and mother living in Atlanta. She currently works as an educator, actress, herbalist and doula. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Southern Humanities Review, Indiana Review, Radar Poetry, Los Angeles Review, Obsidian, Gulf Coast Journal, Tahoma Literary Review and elsewhere. Alafia was selected by Evie Shockley as the winner of the 2023 Furious Flower Prize. She was a nominee for Best New Poets, a semi-finalist for the 92Y Discovery Prize and a finalist for the Sewanee Poetry Contest. Alafia is the recipient of the Sustainable Arts Foundation Award.

ABOUT MARCI CALABRETTA CANCIO-BELLO: Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello is the author of Hour of the Ox (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016), winner of the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry. She co-translated Yi Won’s The World’s Lightest Motorcycle (Zephyr Press, 2021), which won the 2022 Translation Grand Prize from the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. Cancio-Bello has received fellowships from the NEA, Kundiman, Knight Foundation, and American Literary Translators Association, and her work has appeared in Kenyon Review Online, The New York Times, and more. She is co-founder of the Adoptee Literary Festival and PEN America Miami/South Florida Chapter, and a program manager for Miami Book Fair. www.MarciCalabretta.com

Host or Publisher The Betsy Hotel