Poetry Reading for Pride: Willie Carver, Daniel Meltz, and Dan Vera (with James Magruder)

Beloved local writer James Magruder hosts 3 exciting poets for a reading for Pride Month: Willie Carver, Dan Meltz, and Dan Vera! Their books– Gay Poems for Red States, It Wasn’t Easy to Reach You, and Speaking Wiri Wiri, among others– explore the complexities of navigating multiple identities, all with distinct forms of earnestness and wit. They’re intimate, they’re funny, and they reach for something real. We hope you will join us for this affirming event.

Order IT WASN’T EASY TO REACH YOU here

Order GAY POEMS FOR RED STATES here

Order SPEAKING WIRI WIRI here

Click here to RSVP

Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr. has spent his entire life dedicated to student success. He holds degrees in French and English from Morehead State University, where he focused his studies on advocacy for students, particularly first generation, Appalachian, and minoritized students. He began his work in eastern Kentucky, later studying and teaching in France. In 2022, Carver was named Kentucky Teacher of the Year and Ambassador to the Kentucky Department of Education, where he created a platform of inclusion and advocacy for LGBTQ+, BIPOC, and Appalachian students. His work has been published in Kentucky Teacher, Education Week, and EdPost. Carver’s story has been featured on NBC, PBS, NPR, and other news outlets.

Dan Meltz was raised in the low-rent reaches of Jersey, 16 minutes from Times Square, and has lived in Manhattan for fifty years. He’s a retired technical writer and teacher of Deaf young people, with a B.A. from Columbia (no honors). His stories and poems have appeared in dozens of print and online journals. Both his first book of poems, “It Wasn’t Easy to Reach You,” from Trail to Table, and his first novel, “Rabbis of the Garden State,” from Rattling Good Yarns, have been published in 2025.

Dan Vera is a DC-based writer and editor, and literary historian. Recipient of the Oscar Wilde Award for Poetry and the Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize, he’s the co-editor of Imaniman: Poets Writing In The Anzaldúan Borderlands (Aunt Lute Books) and author of Speaking Wiri Wiri (Red Hen Press) and The Space Between Our Danger and Delight (Beothuk Books). His poems appear in high school textbooks and university curricula, various journals like Poetry, Notre Dame Review, and Poet Lore; and in various anthologies including The Library of America’s recent Latino Poetry Anthology.

James Magruder is a fiction writer, playwright, and translator. His adaptations of Dickens, Marivaux, Molière, Gozzi, Lesage, Labiche, Giraudoux, and Hoffmanstal have been staged across America, and in Japan, England, and Germany. His Three French Comedies was named an “Outstanding Literary Translation” by the American Literary Translators Association. He has published four books of fiction (Sugarless, Let Me See It, Love Slaves of Helen Hadley Hall, and Vamp Until Ready), and written the books for two Broadway musicals (Triumph of Love and Head Over Heels, the blank verse mash-up of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia and the song catalog of the Go-Go’s. His first–and last–book of nonfiction, The Play’s the Thing: Fifty Years of Yale Repertory Theater (1966-2016), was published three months ago by Yale University Press.