Roxbury Poetry Festival
2026 Schedule
June 27, 2026
Registration is open. Session details are subject to change as the festival program is finalized.
Register now
10:00am - 11:15am
Panels & Workshops
10:00am - 11:15am
The Artist Talk
Panel discussion with Ife Franklin and Stephen Hamilton
The Artist Talk brings together Roxbury-based artists Stephen Hamilton and Ife Franklin for conversation, reflection, and creative exchange. Each artist will give a 15-minute presentation centered on the work they are currently developing, offering insight into their process, inspirations, and evolving ideas before opening the floor for audience questions.
Register nowNourishing the Body and Spirit: Poets Writing Food
Writing workshop with Amanda Gunn
Poets often turn to the subject of food—and its careful preparation—to tell their unique family history, to explore their cultural inheritance, or to write themselves against the grain of a dominant culture. We’ll start this generative workshop with a short meditation to lead us to our heart-subject: What food, what recipe feels as delicious and deep as home to you? Whose hands were the hands that prepared the food that fed you? We’ll look at poems in a range of forms that explore nourishment that is both physical and spiritual and, together, free-write poems that tell our own food stories.
Register nowReconsidering the Page
Writing workshop with Kes Maro and Kayla Kennedy
A workshop for performance poets and anyone interested in reconsidering the relationship between form, the shape of the poem on the page, and structure, the way information is presented in the poem. Attendees will work through tools and exercises for revision, considering the line, tone, pacing, and the many versions of a poem.
Register now11:30am - 12:45pm
Panels & Workshops
11:30am - 12:45pm
Dreamscape: Future of Roxbury III
Panel + discussion curated by Eric “Pops” Esteves
This panel discussion will explore the past and present future of Roxbury. It offers a space for natives, transplants, and others to discuss a dreamscape for Roxbury's future. This is the third and final installment of the session.
Register nowFor the Culture: Journalism, Resistance, and the Practice of Black Joy
Craft talk & workshop with Jeneé Osterheldt
This lecture-meets-workshop explores the power of journalism, storytelling, and cultural curation as tools for documenting Black life, joy, and resistance. The session is ideal for writers, journalists, poets, artists, organizers, content creators, and anyone interested in storytelling as a practice of liberation and joy.
Register nowFUNNY HA HA: Writing Hilarious Poems with Jill McDonough
Writing workshop with Jill McDonough
Let’s get together and tell funny stories and turn them into poems. This workshop uses free writing, non-sequiturs, quoted dialogue, wacky observations, inappropriate asides, slang, and storytelling techniques to sound like our hilarious selves on the page.
Register nowLunch Time Craft Talk
Lunch Time Craft Talk
Craft talk with Keith S. Wilson
Keith S. Wilson is a poet, game designer, and multimedia artist living in Chicago. He is an Affrilachian Poet and a Cave Canem fellow whose books include Fieldnotes on Ordinary Love and Games for Children.
2:30pm - 3:45pm
Workshops & Readings
2:30pm - 3:45pm
Surveying the Soil: A Generative Poetry Workshop
Generative poetry workshop with Emmanuel Oppong Yeboah
What is occupying your mind space right now? In this 75-minute generative writing workshop, participants will tune into the themes, worries, joys, and obsessions most urgent to them in the present moment, tilling the surface layer of awareness to unearth raw material for new poems.
Register nowOn Publishing: The Literary Ecosystem
Panel discussion with Perpetua Cannistraro, Jenny Molberg, Tatiana Johnson Boria, moderated by Lin Flores
A conversation about the world of publishing today, featuring editors, publishers, and literary artists. The panel will explore publishing, literary culture, and the pathways writers take to bring their work into the world.
Register nowThe Art of Creative Nonfiction
Writing workshop with Maria Pinto
Is there a true story you'd like to tell, but you're at a loss for how to write your way into it? In this generative workshop, participants will identify scenes and personalities essential to the piece they aim to write and respond to prompts designed to build momentum.
Register now4:00pm - 5:15pm
Workshops & Readings
4:00pm - 5:15pm
Homosexual Intifada: A Queer Palestinian Reading
Panel reading with George Abraham, Mejdulene Shomali, and Hannah Moushabeck
Join queer Palestinian writers, poets, editors, and organizers for a reading and roundtable focused on Homosexual Intifada, a new anthology of global queer Palestinian literature edited by Hannah Moushabeck and George Abraham and published by Interlink Books.
Register nowGoin’ Up Yonder: Religion in Black Poetics
Panel reading with Quintin Collins, Matthew E. Henry, and Sarah Kersey
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For many in the Black American community, religion played a large role in upbringing. Four writers will read poems that include imagery, diction, and other aspects of religion, then discuss how these influences appear in and drive their work.
Register nowIf You Can Feel It / You Can Speak It
Open mic
If You Can Feel IT / You Can Speak Boston's only monthly open mic movement dedicated to voices & experiences of the LGBTQ+ communities of color.
Register nowKeynote & Conversation
Kwame Dawes
Keynote address & conversation
Kwame Dawes is the author of numerous books of poetry, fiction, criticism, and essays. His most recent collection is Sturge Town. Dawes is Professor of Literary Arts at Brown University, Series Editor of the African Poetry Book Series, Director of the African Poetry Book Fund, and Artistic Director of the Calabash International Literary Festival. He is the Poet Laureate of Jamaica for 2024-2027.
Publisher’s Poetry Slam
Publisher’s Poetry Slam
Evening slam hosted by Crystal Valentine
The Publisher’s Poetry Slam will close the festival. Public-facing slam rules, eligibility, application details, and prize language are still being finalized.
More info about the slam