Joyelle McSweeney, photo courtesy of the artist.
As part of our Literary Cabaret series, featuring the Early Career Writers of Poetry's Residency at Banff Centre, join us for an evening celebrating the next generation of storytellers, bards and troubadours.
This showcase brings together original works from resident poets, sharing verse that range from tales of urban malaise to queering marriage. The event will feature short readings and reflections on works-in-progress, offering a glimpse into creative process, voice, and lyricism craft across their poetry and lyrical narrative prose.
Acclaimed writer and faculty mentor Joyelle McSweeney will host the evening and share from her own celebrated work.
Joyelle McSweeney brings major international stature and a fiercely original voice to the series. Her work is known for its intensity, invention, theatricality, and genre-defying approach to poetry and performance. As a poet, critic, publisher, and advocate for global literature, she offers a powerful draw for audiences interested in bold contemporary poetics.
Discover bold new voices shaping the future of poetry. Explore curated selections from Pages Books and enjoy the welcoming creative atmosphere. Doors open at 6:15 p.m. in CLVB '33, with things kicking off at 7 p.m. Stay after to mingle with writers and faculty until 9:30 p.m.
Admission is free. Don’t miss this inspiring night of creativity, community, and verse! Event and audience may be captured on film.
About Joyelle Mcsweeney
Joyelle McSweeney
Guggenheim fellow Joyelle McSweeney is the author of ten books, including the poetry volumes Death Styles and Toxicon and Arachne (both Nightboat Books); the eco-decadent poetics book The Necropastoral: Poetry, Media, Occults (University of Michigan Poets on Poetry Series); and the verse-play Dead Youth, or, the Leaks, which was selected to inaugurate the Leslie Scalapino Prize for Women Performance Writers. In 2022, McSweeney received the Shelley Memorial Award for "poetic genius" from the Poetry Society of America. With Johannes Göransson, she is the co-founder of the international press Action Books which has help build global audiences for poets and translators like Kim Hyesoon, Raúl Zurita, Don Mee Choi and others. She lives in the Great Lakes region of the US and is Chair of the English Department at the University of Notre Dame.