Staff Picks is a virtual-only quarterly reading series curated by the poets who assist with our space, web, events and office work. Each reading features a lineup of three poets nominated by different staff members as among the most essential new voices today. The series focuses on writers yet to publish a full-length collection of poetry, with an emphasis on Brooklyn-based poets and those from underrepresented communities. The event includes readings by our three featured poets and the poets they invite to open for them.
mallika singh is a poet, farmer, cook and facilitator who makes work about ecosystems and intimacies. in collaboration with friend and poet Rebeca Alderete Baca, mallika runs OOZE—an event series that celebrates poetry, ritual and gathering where we can. mallika also facilitates a study and writing group called Rivering Towards: Desert-Water Poetics and Politics. their debut chapbook, Retrieval, was published in 2020 by Wendy’s Subway. born in Delhi, India, and raised in the Bay Area, CA, and Santa Fe, NM, mallika belongs to the Sikh Punjabi diaspora and the open skies of New Mexico. mallika is currently based in Albuquerque, NM, and is growing vegetables, herbs and flowers with their coworkers at Ashokra Farm.
Yi Wei is a writer. She’s editing at Asian American Writers’ Workshop and her work can be found or is forthcoming in Palette Poetry, Frontier Poetry, Pigeon Pages and Poetry Northwest. Yi has been awarded or placed for the Frontier OPEN, Lois Morrell Poetry Prize, the Sappho Prize for Women Poets, Best of the Net, and the Lorraine Williams Poetry Prize. She is currently a Writer in the Public Schools fellow at NYU.
Isabella Willms-Jones is a Creole-German writer of daytime copy and nighttime poems based in Philadelphia. Her work has previously appeared in MiddleWestern Voice, Hot Pink Magazine, G*Mob and Silver Operation.