"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 takes place on the second Thursday of each month at 7:30 pm 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!

March's featured poets are Saretta Morgan and Nicholas Goodly in celebration of their books, Alt-Nature and Black Swim.

Saretta Morgan was born in Appalachia and raised on military installations. Her work considers the ecologies and intimacies that materialize in the shadows of U.S. militarization. From 2018-2023 she lived between the Sonoran and Mohave Deserts where she organized with the grassroots humanitarian aid organization No More Deaths, as well as several community-based initiatives that centered wellness for BIPOC and immigrant communities. Her first full-length book of poems, Alt-Nature (Coffee House Press, 2024), emerged from those experiences. She is also the author of the chapbooks Feeling Upon Arrival (2018) and room for a counter interior (2017). More at sarettamorgan.com.

The poems of Alt-Nature move in desert dreams and riverbeds. Here, geography forms the basis of feeling and connection in the American Southwest. Being and becoming along meridians of environmental degradation, globalized/ing militarism, and incarceration, Saretta Morgan thinks through the languages that instantiate violence alongside those which prepare the body for love.

Nicholas Goodly is the author of Black Swim (Copper Canyon, 2022). They are a  team member of the performing arts platform Fly on a Wall and Poetry Editor for The Southeast Review. Nicholas was a finalist for the 2020 Jake Adam York Prize, runner-up for the 2019 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and recipient of the 2017 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship, among other awards. Their work has appeared in Poetry Magazine, The New Yorker, Boston Review, BOMB, The Poetry Project, Lambda Literary, Narrative Magazine, and elsewhere.

In Black Swim, Nicholas Goodly casts a spell to transform darkness into perfect darkness. This stunning debut collection is at once "forged from the hurt parts of the ground," and "proof of a miracle," spinning ache and sweat and sweetness into a new model of feeling through language. Black people, queer/trans/nonbinary people, flamboyant people, lonely people, gaudy people, kind people, witches, artists, and angry people will meet themselves and each other in these pages. Amidst death and against injustice, Goodly's poems bear gifts for and from the ancestors--a necklace, a mirror, a form of offered prayer: "If there is a purpose in this life / let me wash my face in it."

Samuel Ace is a trans/genderqueer poet and sound artist. His most recent books are Our Weather Our Sea (Black Radish), Meet MeThere: Normal Sex & Home in three days. Don’t wash. (Belladonna* Germinal Texts), and the chapbook What started / this mess (above/ground press). 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 ex-Puritan, POETRY, We Want it All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetry, PEN America, Best American Experimental Poetry, and many other journals and anthologies. A book-length poetic essay, I Want to Start by Saying, is forthcoming from the Cleveland State University Poetry Center (2024).

This event is free and open to all people, especially to those who have no income or low income right now, but we encourage and appreciate a solidarity donation in support of the work of Charis Circle, our programming non-profit. Charis Circle's mission is to foster sustainable feminist communities, work for social justice, and encourage the expression of diverse and marginalized voices. https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/CharisCircle?code=chariscirclepage

If you would like to watch the virtual event with computer-generated captions, please watch in Google Chrome and enable captions. 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. We are actively learning the best practices for this technology and we welcome your feedback as we continue to connect across distances.

By attending our 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. 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.

Please enter an amount between 0 and $500 to reserve your virtual seat.

Meet Me There: Featuring Saretta Morgan and Nicholas Goodly