Three Louisiana poets will talk about the importance of poetry as well as their new collections at 6 p.m., Monday, April 5, via video conference online. Visit www.jplibrary.net/adults for more details, including how to join the discussion.

Launched by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996, National Poetry Month reminds the public that poets have an integral role to play in our culture and that poetry matters. Over the years, it has become the largest literary celebration in the world, with tens of millions of readers, students, K–12 teachers, librarians, booksellers, literary events curators, publishers, families, and poets, marking poetry's important place in our lives.

The poetry panel consists of Ava Leavell Haymon, Julie Kane and Brad Richard.

Ava Leavell Haymon

Ava Leavell Haymon served as the 2013-2015 Poet Laureate for the State of Louisiana. She is the author of four collections of poetry, including Eldest Daughter, Why the House Is Made of Gingerbread, Kitchen Heat, and The Strict Economy of Fire, as well as five chapbooks.
She is the editor of the Louisiana State University Press Barataria Poetry Series and has been awarded the Louisiana Literature Prize for poetry in 2003, the L.E. Phillabaum Poetry Award for 2010, the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters 2011 Award in Poetry and has taught as an artist in schools for many years.
Her third book, Why The House Was Made Of Gingerbread, was chosen as one of the top ten books of 2010 by Women's Voices for Change.
Haymon's work has appeared in Northwest Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry, and others.

Julie Kane

Julie Kane served as the 2011-2013 Poet Laureate for the State of Louisiana.

In her most recent collection, Kane returns to her Boston Irish Catholic roots about mothers and daughters shaped by the forces of Irish history and Irish-¬American culture. Mothers of Ireland confronts how the legacy of personal trauma gets passed down to subsequent generations, with a focus on women from her family history and their paths of pain and endurance.

The great-grandchild of eight Irish immigrants, Julie Kane is a native of Boston but a longtime resident of Louisiana. Her previous poetry collections include Jazz Funeral and Rhythm & Booze. A past National Poetry Series winner and Fulbright scholar, she teaches in the low¬-residency MFA program at Western Colorado University.

Brad Richard

Brad Richard is the author of four collections of poems, most recently Parasite Kingdom, winner of the 2018 Tenth Gate Prize from The Word Works. His chapbook In Place was selected for the 2021 Robin Becker Series from Seven Kitchens Press.

Richard’s poems and reviews have been published or are forthcoming in many journals, including The Cortland Review, Gettysburg Review, Guernica, The Nervous Breakdown, New Orleans Review, and The Southern Review. He is an instructor for the Kenyon Review’s Writers Workshop for Teachers and for New Orleans Writers Workshop.

He also serves on the editorial board of The Word Works (where he is series editor for the Hilary Tham Capitol Collection) and is secretary of the board of directors of the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival.

For more information regarding this event, contact Chris Smith, Manager of Adult Programming for the library, at 504-889-8143 or wcsmith@jefferson.lib.la.us.