Saturday, June 1st, 3PM, Ernest Hilbert will read from his new collection of poems, Storm Swimmer, with Carolyn Raphael in New York City for the Carmine Street Metrics series.

The event is located at the Jefferson Market Library Reading Room, 425 Avenue of the Americas (6th Avenue between 9th & 10th Streets), New York, NY 10011, 212-243-4334. This branch of the New York Public Library has a fascinating history, which you can read about here.

Ernest Hilbert is the author of the poetry collections Sixty Sonnets, All of You on the Good Earth, Caligulan—selected as winner of the 2017 Poets’ Prize—and Last One Out. His fifth book, Storm Swimmer, was selected by Rowan Ricardo Phillips as the winner of the 2022 Vassar Miller Prize and appeared in 2023. He lives in Philadelphia where he works as a rare book dealer and book critic for The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Fine Books and Collections. His poem “Mars Ultor” was included in Best American Poetry 2018, and his poems appear in Yale Review, American Poetry Review, BOMB, Harvard Review, Parnassus, Sewanee Review, Hudson Review, Boston Review, The New Republic, American Scholar, and the London Review. In 2023 he was awarded the Meringoff Writing Award for Poetry from the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers. Visit him at www.ernesthilbert.com.

Carolyn Raphael retired from the English Department at Queensborough Community College, CUNY, after more than thirty years of teaching. Her poems have appeared in journals including The Lyric, Measure, Oberon, Blue Unicorn, Long Island Quarterly, and on the Newington-Cropsey Cultural Studies website for the American Arts Quarterly, where her poem, “Honorable Mention,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her chapbook, Diagrams of Bittersweet, was published by Somers Rock Press in 1997. Her poetry collection, The Most Beautiful Room in the World, was published by David Robert Books in 2010, and her second collection, Dancing with Bare Feet, was published by Kelsay/White Violet Press in 2016. A chapbook, Grandma Poems—Not Too Sweet, was published by Kelsay Books/Aldrich Press in late 2017. Her newest book Travelers on My Route was published on March 2, 2023 by Kelsay Books.