This event takes place in person at Charis and on Crowdcast, Charis' virtual event platform. This event is free, but registration is required for virtual attendance. Click here to register to attend virtually. 

"Meet Me There" is a monthly intergenerational poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction experience curated by trans/genderqueer poet and sound artist Samuel Ace. Writers exploring genre and gender boundaries will be a special focus of this series. This event usually takes place on the second Thursday of each month at 7:30pm ET. Some months our readings will take place at Charis Books with an option to watch virtually, and some months the event will be fully virtual, so be sure to check the listing!

October's featured poets are Acie Clark and Chrysanthemum Brook Watkins in celebration of their collections, Small Talk and The Drag Gospel of Queer Jesus.

Acie Clark is a multi-genre writer from Florida and Georgia. He has taught at the University of Central Arkansas, Interlochen, the Provincetown Public Library, and as a mentor with SUNHOUSE. He received his MFA from the University of Alabama where he worked for Black Warrior Review and as a farmhand at Snows Bend Farm. His work has been supported by the Fine Arts Work Center and the Collegeville Institute, selected for Best New Poets 2025, and anthologized in Divinity in the Margins, I Witness, and The Florida Anthology. His debut collection, Small Talk, was selected by Derrick Austin for the New Southern Voices Poetry Prize and will be published by Hub City Press in September 2026.

Chrysanthemum (Chris) Brook Watkins is a trans poet, environmentalist, and the author of The Drag Gospel of Queer Jesus (Saturnalia Books 2026). She graduated from Florida State University with her PhD in poetry and a concentration in ecocriticism, poetic forms, and gender studies. A Sundress Publications and Elk River Writers Fellow and a finalist for The National Poetry Series, Chris’s poetry has appeared in such publications as Only Poems, Poetry Magazine, Ecotone, and the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series.


Samuel Ace is a trans/genderqueer writer and sound artist. His latest books are I want to start by saying (Cleveland State University Poetry Center 2024), Our Weather Our Sea (Black Radish 2019), and Meet Me There: Normal Sex & Home in three days. Don’t wash. (Belladonna* 2019). Ace is the recipient of the Astraea Lesbian Writer Award and the Firecracker Alternative Book Award in Poetry, as well as a repeat finalist for both the Lambda Literary Award and the National Poetry Series. Recent work can be found in Personal Best: Makers on Their Poems that Matter Most, Essential Queer Voices of U.S. Poetry, Fence, BathHouse, The Texas Review, Poetry, We Want it All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetry, Best American Experimental Poetry, and many other journals and anthologies. 

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 or in person at the event.

Please read the in-person event guidelines below to be sure you can participate in the event.

In-person event guidelines:

We will begin seating people at 7:00 PM ET.

This event will be live-streamed via Crowdcast. Click here to register to attend virtually.

As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event.

If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request specific accessibility accommodations, please contact info@charisbooksandmore.com or call the store at 404-524-0304

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 captions, you may do so by turning subtitles on in Crowdcast once the event begins. You can also choose small, medium, or large subtitle text. Your subtitle settings only affect your own viewing experience, so you can change them without affecting anyone else watching the event. 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 event, whether in person or virtual, 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 info@chariscircle.org immediately.

Meet Me There: Featuring Acie Clark & Chrysanthemum Brook Watkins