Join us on June 27, at 8 pm, for a queer poetry reading curated by poet Tom Healy, in collaboration with the 2025 Skidmore Summer Writers Institute. Listen to poets Alex Dimitrov, Mark Doty, Megan Fernandes, and Pamela Sneed read their work in the exhibition a field of bloom and hum.

This event is free and open to the public.

About the Poets

Alex Dimitrov is the author of four books of poetry, including Ecstasy, Love and Other Poems, Together and by Ourselves, Begging for It, and the chapbook American Boys. His poems have been published in The New Yorker, the New York Times, The Paris Review, and Poetry. Dimitrov has taught writing at Princeton University, Columbia University, and New York University, among others, and was also the Senior Content Editor at the Academy of American Poets, where he edited the popular series “Poem-a-Day” and American Poets magazine. He is also the founder of the newly revived queer poetry salon Wilde Boys (2009-13, 2024-present), which brings together emerging and established writers in Manhattan.

Mark Doty won the National Book Award for Poetry with Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems. His most recent book is What is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life, a hybrid of memoir and literary criticism and a meditation on the remarkable reach of Whitman’s voice across time. Doty has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Whiting Foundation. He served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2011 to 2016. Doty has taught at the University of Houston and is currently serving as a distinguished writer at Rutgers University. He lives in the Hudson River Valley.

Megan Fernandes is a South Asian writer living in NYC. Fernandes has work published in The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, Tin House, Ploughshares, Chicago Review, and Boston Review, among others. She is the author of The Kingdom and After (Tightrope Books, 2015), Good Boys (Tin House, 2020), and I Do Everything I’m Told (Tin House, 2023). Fernandes is an Associate Professor of English and the Writer-in-Residence at Lafayette College, where she teaches courses on poetry, creative nonfiction, and critical theory. She holds a PhD in English from the University of California, Santa Barbara and an MFA in poetry from Boston University.

Tom Healy is the author of three books of poems, including What the Right Hand Knows, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Lambda Literary Award. He is a trustee of PEN America, The Bass Museum and the National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian. He chairs the O, Miami Poetry Festival and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Under President Obama, he led the international Fulbright Scholars program. 

Pamela Sneed is a New York City-based poet, performer, visual artist, and educator. She is the author of Funeral Diva (City Lights, 2020) and Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom than Slavery (Fordham University Press). Funeral Diva won the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for lesbian poetry. Sneed has toured poetry and performance works domestically and abroad. Her recent show, A Tribute to Big Mama Thornton, premiered in 2024 at the Torpedo Theater in Amsterdam. She won a 2023 Creative Capital award in literature as well as a 2024 NYSCA grant in poetry. Her visual work has appeared in group shows at the Ford Foundation, Company Gallery, and more.

About the Summer Writers Institute

Since 1987, the Summer Writers Institute has been offering students the opportunity to learn from an extraordinary faculty of distinguished writers led by director Robert Boyers (Professor of English at Skidmore). The program is an offshoot of the New York State Writers Institute created by Albany native and Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Kennedy. An Evening with Poets in a field of bloom and hum is offered in collaboration with the Summer Writers Institute’s 2025 public reading series.