An Evening of Poetry and Conversation with Ohio's Poet Laureates!

Join Ohio’s laureates Kari Gunter-Seymour, Dave Lucas, and Amit Majmudar for a lively soiree of poetry and conversation, including discussions surrounding each poet’s personal experiences and the challenges incurred while working to bring poetry to the people in today’s contemporary, screen-based culture. How does one become the poet laureate in Ohio? How must a laureate navigate being a politically appointed figure in an era of extreme political polarization? How do expectations compare to opportunities? Who “oversees” the state laureate? This event will be moderated by Poets & Writers contributor Renée Shea.

Books by each of the poets will be available at the event.

THE OHIO POETRY ASSOCIATION is Gramercy’s Community Partner for this program.

Kari Gunter-Seymour is the current Poet Laureate of Ohio, the curator/host of the virtual series Spoken & Heard, and the Executive Director of the Women of Appalachia Project and editor of its anthology series Women Speak. She is the author of three award-winning collections of poetry, her most recent, Dirt Songs (EastOver Press 2024). Her work has been featured in the American Book Review, Poem-a-Day, World Literature Today and The New York Times.

Dave Lucas was Ohio Poet Laureate from 2018 to 2019. He is a lecturer, poet, sometime scholar, full time Cleveland evangelist, and author of Weather (University of Georgia Press, 2011), winner of the 2012 Ohioana Book Award. His poetry has been anthologized in The Bedford Introduction to Literature and Best New Poets 2005 and has appeared in such journals as The American Poetry Review, Blackbird, and The Paris Review. He teaches at Case Western Reserve University.

Amit Majmudar was Ohio’s first Poet Laureate from 2015-2017. He is a diagnostic nuclear radiologist in Westerville, Ohio, where he lives with his wife and three children. Recent and forthcoming books include Twin A: A Memoir (Slant Books, 2023), The Great Game: Essays on Poetics (Acre Books, 2024), the hybrid work Three Metamorphoses (Orison Books, 2025), and Things my Grandmother Said: Poems (Knopf, 2026).

Renée Shea, formerly an English professor at Bowie State University in Maryland, has written extensively for Poets & Writers Magazine, contributing profiles of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Edwidge Danticat, Rita Dove, Camille T. Dungy, Imbolo Mbue, Celeste Ng, Naomi Shihab Nye, Arundhati Roy, Namwali Serpell, and Tracey K Smith. Shea is lead author for the English Language Arts High School Series for Bedford, Freeman & Worth.