This event takes place on Crowdcast, Charis' virtual event platform. This event is free, but registration is required for virtual attendance. 

Charis welcomes poets Subhaga Crystal Bacon, Chen Chen, Richie Hofmann, Luther Hughes, Margot Kahn, Keetje Kuipers, Rajiv Mohabir, Laura Read, Leigh Sugar for All Our Exes, a reading featuring poems on past lovers & flings.

Subhaga Crystal Bacon (they/them), is the author of five collections of poetry including, A Brief History of My Sex Life, forthcoming from Lily Poetry Review Books; the Lambda Literary finalist, Transitory, 2023, winner of the BOA Editions, Ltd. Isabella Gardner Award for Poetry; Surrender of Water in Hidden Places, winner of the Red Flag Poetry Chapbook Prize, 2023, released in an expanded second edition in the summer of 2024.  A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, Subhaga has been an AWP Writer to Writer mentor and is a teaching artist working in schools and libraries with youth and adults, as well as private students. Their work appears or is forthcoming in a variety of print and online journals including Terrain, The Diode Poetry Journal, The Bellevue Literary Review, Indianapolis Review, Smartish Pace, and others. A Queer elder, they live in rural north central Washington on unceded Methow land.

Chen Chen is the author of two books of poetry, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (2022) and When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (2017), both published by BOA Editions. His latest chapbook is Explodingly Yours (Ghost City Press, 2023). His honors include two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and United States Artists. He lives in Rochester, NY and teaches for the low-residency MFA programs at New England College, Stonecoast, and Antioch.

Richie Hofmann is the author, most recently, of The Bronze Arms (Knopf, 2026).

Luther Hughes is the author of A Shiver in the Leaves (BOA Editions, 2022). Their honors include the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Rosenberg Fellowship, the 92Y Discovery Poetry Prize, Cascade PBS’s Black Arts Legacies honoree, and named Most Influential by Seattle Magazine. They’ve been featured in The Seattle Times, Forbes, Essence, KUOW Public Radio, and more. Luther lives in Seattle.

Margot Kahn is the author of The Unreliable Tree (Northwestern University Press, 2025). Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry Society of America, American Poets, Literary Hub, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere.

Keetje Kuipers' fourth collection of poems is Lonely Women Make Good Lovers. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, and her poems have appeared in the Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies. She lives in Montana and is Editor of Poetry Northwest.

Poet, memoirist, and translator, Rajiv Mohabir is the author of five books of poetry, the latest is Seabeast (Four Way Books 2025). His books have been awarded gold in Forward Indies and Eric Hoffer Medal Provocateur. His other honors include being finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/America Open Book Award, the Lambda Literary Award, the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction, and both second place and finalist for the Guyana Prize for Literature. His translations have won the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the American Academy of Poets. Currently he teaches poetry at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Laura Read is the author But She Is Also Jane, Dresses from the Old Country, Instructions for my Mother’s Funeral, and The Chewbacca on Hollywood Boulevard Reminds Me of You. She teaches at Spokane Falls Community College and in the MFA program at Eastern Washington University.

Leigh Sugar (she/her) does poems and other artsy things, often about love and love's disappointments. When not poem-ing, Leigh loves to walk and cuddle her pup, Elmo, and eat string cheese. Leigh's debut poetry collection, FREELAND, is now out from Alice James Books, and she edited the anthology That's a Pretty Thing to Call It: Prose and Poetry by Artists Teaching in Carceral Settings (New Village Press, 2023). A disabled writer, Leigh teaches when able, historically through Hugo House, the Poetry Foundation, and other venues.

The event is free and open to all people, but we encourage and appreciate a donation of $5-20 in support of the work of Charis Circle, our programming non-profit. Donate on Crowdcast or via our website: www.chariscircle.org/donate.

Please contact us at info@chariscircle.org or 404-524-0304 if you would like ASL interpretation at this event. If you would like to watch the event with live AI captions, you may do so by watching it in Google Chrome and enabling captions: Instructions here. If you have other accessibility needs or if you are someone who has skills in making digital events more accessible please don't hesitate to reach out to info@chariscircle.org.

By attending our virtual event, you agree to our Code of Conduct: Our event seeks to provide a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof), class, or technology choices. We do not tolerate harassment in any form. Unsolicited sexual language and imagery are not appropriate. Anyone violating these rules will be expelled from this event and all future events at the discretion of the organizers. Please report all harassment to Charis staff immediately or email info@chariscircle.org.

All Our Exes Poetry Reading - hosted by Margot Kahn & Keetje Kuipers