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Charis welcomes Denise Duhamel, Aaron Smith, and Samuel Ace for a celebration of their new books, written in collaboration with the late Maureen Seaton. Maureen Seaton’s (1947-2023) commitment to collaboration and the collaborative process was as important to her as her solo work. She cultivated deep and life-long creative partnerships with several writers. After Maureen’s death in 2023, three of those writers - Samuel Ace, Denise Duhamel, and Aaron Smith - published books co-written with Maureen. Tonight we celebrate those books -Tilt, Beautiful People, and Portals - as well as Maureen’s love and the creative possibilities of collaboration. To learn more about Maureen's orientation towards creative collaboration, check out this 2006 interview for the Academy of American Poets, where Maureen and Denise put together a set of guidelines they call “The 10 Commandments of Collaboration."

Tilt / Beautiful People brings to life two innovative poetry books integrated into one. 

In Tilt, Denise Duhamel and Maureen Seaton write through climate change, Maureen’s illness, and the pandemic with their signature wit and poignancy. Their feminist curiosity leads them to poems about gender identity, marriage equality, and the complexities of national politics. Assembled shortly before Maureen’s death, the poems in Tilt tell the story of a friendship rooted in collaborative artistic play. The title of the book gives a nod to the earth’s tilt, which gives us seasons, but also hints that the poems were written at full tilt, these poets hyperaware they only had so much time left to write with one another.

Beautiful People was written back and forth over the course of several months by poets Maureen Seaton and Aaron Smith. Bold and inventive, it moves from sonnets and sestinas to prose poems and so much more. While its center is a love for poetry and art and laughter, the poets also grapple with mortality, sadness, and what it means to be alive on a broken but beautiful planet. Through their literary friendship, they put a mirror to all our lovely faces.

Of Portals writer Julie Marie Wade says: Sometimes the lore about collaboration is that it's additive: one plus one equals two--voices, perspectives, hearkenings. But when Samuel Ace and Maureen Seaton poem together, the effect is multiplicative and multitudinous: all the ones inside each one times all the ones inside the other--a string of brightly colored beads, a literary Rubik's cube, a singular book of infinite plenitude. Herein you'll find a testament to their witnessing of and reckoning with, among many other and othered things, invisible cloaks and 'the brutal feminine.' Herein you'll also find a paean to long friendship, queer solidarity, and an innovative demonstration of these poets' "flawless resiliency.”

Denise Duhamel and Maureen Seaton co-authored six collections, the most recent of which is Tilt (Bridwell Press, 2025). She co-edited (with Maureen Seaton and David Trinidad) Saints of Hysteria: A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry (Soft Skull Press, 2007). Her solo books include Pink Lady (Pitt Poetry Series, 2025), Second Story (Pittsburgh, 2021), and Scald (Pittsburgh, 2017). Blowout (Pittsburgh, 2013) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In Which (2024) is a winner of the Rattle Chapbook Prize. A recipient of NEA and Guggenheim Fellowships, she is a distinguished university professor at Florida International University in Miami.

Aaron Smith and Maureen Seaton co-authored Beautiful People (Bridwell Press, 2025). He is the author of four books of poetry published by the Pitt Poetry Series. His collections include Blue on Blue Ground (2005), winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize; Appetite (2012), an NPR Great Read and finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize; Primer (2016), a Poetry Must Read for the Massachusetts Center for the Book; and The Book of Daniel (2019). His chapbooks include Men in Groups and What’s Required, winner of the Frank O’Hara Award. A three-time finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, he is the recipient of fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Mass Cultural Council, and his work has appeared in such publications as Court Green, Ploughshares, and The Best American Poetry 2013. He has taught at West Virginia Wesleyan and is currently Associate Professor in Creative Writing at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA.

Samuel Ace and Maureen Seaton co-authored two books, the most recent of which is Portals (Ravenna Press, 2025). Ace is a trans & genderqueer poet whose most recent solo books include 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 and Home in three days. Don’t wash. (Belladonna* Germinal Texts, 2019). He is also the author of several chapbooks. Ace is the recipient of the Astraea Lesbian Writer Award and the Firecracker Alternative Book Award in Poetry, a multi-time finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Poetry and the National Poetry Series. His work has been widely published and recent work can be found in The Georgia Review, Personal Best: Makers on Their Poems that Matter Most (Copper Canyon), The Texas Review, Poetry, We Want it All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetry, and many other journals and anthologies.

Maureen Seaton (1947-2023) authored more than two dozen books of poetry and one memoir, most recently The Sky is an Elephant (2023), and Undersea (2021). Other solo books of poetry include Fear of Subways (1991), winner of the Eighth Mountain Poetry Prize; Furious Cooking (1996), winner of both the Iowa Poetry Prize and a Lambda Literary Award; Venus Examines Her Breast (2004), winner of the Publishing Triangle’s Audre Lorde Award; Cave of the Yellow Volkswagen (2009); Fibonacci Batman: New and Selected Poems (2013); Fisher (2018); and Sweet World (2019), first place winner of the Florida Book Award. Her memoir Sex Talks to Girls (2008 and reissued 2018) earned her a second Lambda Literary Award. In addition to her solo work, Maureen was also a prolific, energetic, and generous collaborator. She wrote with and published several collaborative books with Denise Duhamel, Samuel Ace, Neil de la Flor, Aaron Smith, Kristine Snodgrass, Nicole Tallman, Carolina Hospital, Nicole Hospital-Medina, and Holly Iglesias. Maureen’s work was read widely and received many accolades. In addition to her Lambda awards, she was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a grant from the Illinois Arts Council. Her poems appear in issues of The Best American Poetry and the Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses. She was voted Miami’s Best Poet 2020 by The Miami New Times and was Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing at the University of Miami.

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What a Whirl: 3 poets read from new books written in collaboration with the late Maureen Seaton