Attribution:
Heather Tosteson, writer
This was a poetry reading to celebrate Poetry Month initiated by the Dekalb Library, as part of its Diversity in DeKalb series. Held at the Toco-Hills, a new library branch, it brought together a young poet, Jenny Sadre-Orafi, who writes about her bicultural Mexican and Iranian background, and me, a poet in her sixties who has traveled broadly in Latin America. Support from Poets & Writers was central to this event, not just because of the stipend, but because I enjoyed the opportunity to explore new, less conventional work with an audience that wasn't necessarily a literary one. This experience and the programming conversations that have flowed from it feel very rewarding.