"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 7:30pm 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!

This Pride Month we bring to you the Meet Me There: Trans Poetry Showcase featuring a stellar group of multigenre trans writers! These writers represent only a fraction of the new work recently published by trans poets and writers.

JD Pluecker works with language, that is, a material thing, a thing of life and history. Their undisciplinary work inhabits the intersections of writing, history, translation, art, interpreting, bookmaking, queer/trans aesthetics, non-normative poetics, language justice, and cross-border cultural production. She has translated numerous books from the Spanish, including the prize-winning Trash by Sylvia Aguilar Zéleny (Deep Vellum Press, 2023). JD’s book of poetry and image, Ford Over, was released from Noemi Press, and Lawndale Art Center supported the publication of the artist book, The Unsettlements: Dad. From 2010-2020, she worked as part of the transdisciplinary collaborative Antena Aire and from 2015-2020 with the local social justice interpreting collective Antena Houston. JD edits chapbooks with Ugly Duckling Presse’s Señal series, is a recipient of the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writing Grant, and has exhibited work at Blaffer Art Museum, the Hammer Museum, Project Row Houses, and more. More info at www.jdpluecker.com and www.antenaantena.org.

Julian Carter’s new multigenre book, Dances of Time and Tenderness (Nightboat 2024), is a cycle of stories linking queer memory, activism, death, and art in a transpoetic history of desire and touch. Other publications include The Heart of Whiteness: Normal Sexuality and Race in America, 1890-1940 (Duke 2007) and shorter pieces in many journals and anthologies including GLQ, TSQ: Trans Studies Quarterly,TDR: The Drama Review; The Journal of the History of Sexuality; The Transgender Studies Reader vol. 2; The Transgender Studies Remix; Queer Dance: Makings and Meanings; About Face: Stonewall, Revolt, and the New Queer Art; and the Routledge Companion to Queer Art History, as well as in various blogs and zines.

K. Iver is a nonbinary trans poet born in Mississippi. Their debut collection Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco won the 2022 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry from Milkweed Editions, selected by Tyehimba Jess. Short Film is a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Award, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and the Lambda Literary Awards and has been named a Best Book of 2023 by the New York Public Library. Iver’s poems have appeared in Boston Review, Kenyon Review, LA Review of Books, and elsewhere. Iver has received fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Sewanee Writers Conference, and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. They have a Ph.D. in Poetry from Florida State University. They are the Roger F. Murray Chair in Creative Writing at Phillips Academy in Andover, MA.

Syd Staiti is author of Seldom Approaches (The Elephants, 2023), and The Undying Present (Krupskaya, 2015). Newer work, First Study, was published in the Belladonna* chaplet series in 2023.

Violet Spurlock is the author of In Lieu of Solutions (Futurepoem, 2023), which was the recipient of the Other Futures Award, as well as Alloyed Bliss (Eyelet, 2021) and VS VS VS (GaussPDF, 2021). She lives in the Bay Area, where she is a PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley.

Zefyr Lisowski is the author of two poetry collections, Blood Box (Black Lawrence Press, 2019) and Girl Work (Noemi Press, 2024). Her essay collection about horror movies, exes, and love is forthcoming from Harper Perennial in Fall 2025. A 2023 NYFA/NYSCA Fellow in Nonfiction, and 2023 Queer|Art Fellow, she lives online at zeflisowski.com. She's seen grave robbers twice.

Zoe Tuck was born in Texas, became a person in California, and now lives in Western Massachusetts, where she co-hosts the But Also reading series with her partner, Britt Billmeyer-Finn. She is the author of Bedroom Vowel (BUNNY Presse, 2023) and Terror Matrix (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2014), in addition to the chapbooks The Book of Bella (Doublecross Press), bound in a dos-a-dos edition with Emily Hunerwadel's Peach Woman, and Vape Cloud of Unknowing (Belladonna* Collaborative). A member of Belladonna* Collaborative and Futurepoem, she also co-edits Hot Pink Magazine with Emily Bark Brown. She teaches creative writing and literature classes through Threshold Academy and elsewhere. Find out more about her reading and people-weaving at zoetuck.substack.com.

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).

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 the night of the event.

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. We are actively learning the best practices for this technology and we welcome your feedback as we begin this new way of connecting across distances.

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. 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.