Events

Join Unbound Edition Press authors at the readings, panels, or receptions scheduled below.

Books are often available at the events, though it’s best to order a copy in advance through our store.

Holloway Poetry Series: Jesse Nathan & John Shoptaw

September 10, 2026 | 5:30 pm PST

John Shoptaw and Jesse Nathan will be featured in UC Berkeley’s Holloway Poetry Series Faculty Reading on September 10th. The reading will be held in Wheeler Hall, Room 300.

Jesse Nathan was raised in northern California and rural Kansas. He teaches literature at UC Berkeley, and he was a founding editor of the McSweeney’s Poetry Series. His poems have appeared in The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, and The New Republic. Eggtooth, his first collection of poems, features a foreword by Robert Hass, and was published in September 2023 by Unbound Edition Press. This highly anticipated title won the 2024 Housatonic Book Award in the poetry category.

John Shoptaw, a leading voice in ecopoetics, is widely published in many of the most respected literary journals and magazines, including Arion, Kenyon Review, The New Yorker, and Poetry. He is the author of On the Outside Looking Out: John Ashbery’s Poetry, the libretto for Eric Sawyer’s opera Our American Cousin (Boston Modern Orchestra Project), and a number of essays on poetry and poetics, including “Why Ecopoetry?” (Poetry). Shoptaw currently teaches in the UC Berkeley English Department. Unbound Edition Press published his poetry collection Near-Earth Object in April 2024.

Map: UC Berkeley
Wheeler Hall, Room 300
Berkeley, CA 94720

Tom Sleigh: A Persistence of Cormorants Poetry Reading Series

September 13, 2026 | 1:30 pm – 3:30 pm EST

Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club Boathouse

Tom Sleigh will be reading with Hilary Sideris, Austin Alexis, and Kristine Esser-Slentz on September 13th at A Persistence of Cormorants, a summer-long poetry reading series on the Gowanus Canal shoreline in Brooklyn, NY featuring accomplished and exceptional poets from the New York area.

Each poet will read for 10 to 15 minutes. The readings will be followed by open mic time limited to ten readers (one poem no longer than 3 minutes) who have signed up the day of the reading on a first come basis. Readings will be outdoors at the Gowanus open shoreline but may move inside the boathouse due to inclement weather or any other disturbance.

Participation is free but donations are encouraged to sustain the efforts of the Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club, an advocacy stewardship organization who has been representing neighborhood interests for over two decades.

Tom Sleigh’s unconventional memoir Rosie was published by Unbound Edition Press in May 2026. It excavates the complex legacy of his mother Rosie — a brilliant English teacher who escaped dirt-poor Kansas through sheer intellectual force, only to struggle with the contradictions of motherhood and her own fierce independence. Sleigh is the award-winning author of eleven books of poetry and several collections of journalism and other prose.

Map: Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club Boathouse
165 2nd St
Brooklyn, NY 11231

Jennifer Clarvoe Author Talk & Signing

September 15, 2026 | 5:00 pm EST

Bank Square Books
RSVP

Bank Square Books in Mystic, CT presents an author talk and signing with Jennifer Clarvoe for her third book of poetry, PIANO PIANO.

In PIANO PIANO, Clarvoe crafts a luminous meditation on time, loss, and the enduring power of art to transform grief into grace. These poems move with the deliberate tempo their title suggests — piano piano, slowly, gently — through landscapes both intimate and archaeological, from a father’s final breaths to ancient cursed tablets unearthed in Turkish soil.

Jennifer Clarvoe is the author of two prior books of poetry: Invisible Tender (Fordham, 2000), and Counter Amores (University of Chicago, 2011). Her awards and fellowships include the Kate Tufts Prize, the Poets Out Loud Prize for Invisible Tender, a fellowship from the Sewanee Writers Conference, a residency at the James Merrill House, and the Rome Prize in Literature. She taught literature and creative writing at Kenyon College for many years. She lives in Somerville, MA, with her husband, Tony Sigel.

Map: Bank Square Books
80 Stonington Road, Suite 8
Mystic, CT 06355

Jennifer Clarvoe & Melissa Range

September 17, 2026 | 7:00 pm EST

Grolier Poetry Book Shop
RSVP: Attend in Person
RSVP: Attend Virtually

Join us at the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Cambridge, MA for a poetry reading by Jennifer Clarvoe and Melissa Range with an introduction by Martha Collins. The event will be held both in person and virtually on Zoom. Please RSVP at the links above to attend.

Clarvoe will be reading from her third book of poetry, PIANO PIANO, published in April 2026 by Unbound Edition Press. In PIANO PIANO, Clarvoe crafts a luminous meditation on time, loss, and the enduring power of art to transform grief into grace. These poems move with the deliberate tempo their title suggests — piano piano, slowly, gently — through landscapes both intimate and archaeological, from a father’s final breaths to ancient cursed tablets unearthed in Turkish soil.

Map: Grolier Poetry Book Shop
6 Plympton Street
Cambridge, MA 02138

National Book Launch for Janet Hardy’s A Slut’s Life in Three Acts

September 19, 2026 | Doors 6:00 pm,

Event 7:00 pm PST (21+)

OASIS
Free – Reserve your spot on Eventbrite

Save the date for the official National Book Launch of Janet W. Hardy‘s A Slut’s Life in Three Acts to be held at Oasis on September 19th.

A Slut’s Life in Three Acts gathers the best of Janet W. Hardy’s autobiographical writing, plus some moving unpublished gems, into a single volume for the first time. The dramatic arc of this essential collection captures a crushingly earnest “girlfag” teenager in 1960s California; moves through three decades of discovering, practicing, and teaching the erotic arts; and culminates in a clear-eyed reckoning with age, loss, and what ecstasy both costs and gives back. Hardy’s writing here reflects perhaps the deepest contemplations on desire by any living author. For readers of the global sensation, The Ethical Slut, and anyone who has ever felt the transformative pull of a life lived fully on their own terms, A Slut’s Life in Three Acts is a vital work from a singular writer.

The event is free, but be sure to reserve a spot on Eventbrite. Oasis is 21+ for all events. Please bring a valid ID.

Map: OASIS
298 Eleventh Street
San Francisco, CA 94103