This series presents readings by a range of emerging, mid-career, and established poets from St. Louis and across the United States. 100 Boots is co-organized by Jessica Baran, poet and Associate Director of Curatorial and Program Development at Barrett Barrera & projects+gallery; and Ted Mathys, poet and educator at St. Louis University. At each reading, limited-edition broadsides are available for free to audience members, and a selection of the poets’ books are for sale courtesy of Left Bank Books. The second event of the season features readings by poets Jennifer Nelson and Solmaz Sharif.
Jennifer Nelson is the author of Civilization Makes Me Lonely, chosen by Anne Boyer for the 2016 Sawtooth Prize (Ahsahta Press, 2017). She is also author of Aim at the Centaur Stealing Your Wife (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2015). Nelson is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Born in Istanbul to Iranian parents, Solmaz Sharif holds degrees from New York University and U.C. Berkeley where she studied and taught with June Jordan’s Poetry for the People. Her debut collection LOOK was a finalist for the 2016 National Book Award and 2017 PEN Open Book Award (Graywolf Press, 2016). Sharif has published poetry in the New Republic and Poetry, and has received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Sharif is currently a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University.
