Hot L Poets Series: Featuring Holly Karapetkova & Lesley Wheeler

Sunday May 11, 2025 at 4pm, The HOT L Poets Series continues at The Ivy Bookshop (Baltimore) with poets Holly Karapetkova & Lesley Wheeler! The reading includes an open mic so bring a poem (1 poem, 3 min. or less). Now in our 7th year, the reading series is sponsored by Smartish Pace and Baltimore Poets Theatre. Hosts: Clare Banks, David Yezzi, Stephen Reichert, Traci O’Dea and Dan Todd.

Click here to RSVP!

Click here to order Dear Empire by Holly Karapetkova!

Click here to order Mycocosmic by Lesley Wheeler!

Holly Karapetkova is Poet Laureate Emerita of Arlington, Virginia, and recipient of a 2022 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship for her work with young poets. She’s the author of three books of poetry, Dear Empire (Gunpowder Press), winner of the 2025 William Meredith Prize and the Barry Spacks Poetry Prize; Towline (Cloudbank Books), winner of the Vern Rutsala Poetry Prize; and Words We Might One Day Say, winner of the Washington Writers’ Publishing House Prize for Poetry.

Lesley Wheeler, Poetry Editor of Shenandoah, is the author of Mycocosmic, runner-up for the Dorset Prize and her sixth poetry collection. Her other books include the hybrid memoir Poetry’s Possible Worlds and the novel Unbecoming. Wheeler’s work has received support from the Fulbright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Workshop, and the Sewanee Writers Workshop; her poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, Poets & Writers, Smartish Pace, Kenyon Review Online, Ecotone, Guernica, Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere.