
Join WORD in celebrating Four Way Books' Spring 2023 releases with readings from Eugenia Leigh, Jennifer Franklin, Rushi Vyas, and Rob Schlegel.
FREE Virtual event
About the Readers
Eugenia Leigh is a Korean American poet and the author of one previous collection of poetry, Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows (Four Way Books, 2014), winner of the Debulitzer Prize in Poetry. Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous publications including Guernica, The Massachusetts Review, The Nation, Ploughshares, Poetry, and The Rumpus. Poems from Bianca were awarded Poetry’s Bess Hokin Prize and selected for the Best of the Net Anthology. A Kundiman fellow, Eugenia received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and serves as a poetry editor at The Adroit Journal.
Jennifer Franklin is the author of two previous full-length poetry collections, most recently No Small Gift (Four Way Books, 2018). Her work has been published widely in print and online including, American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, Beloit Poetry Journal, Bennington Review, Boston Review, Gettysburg Review, Guernica, JAMA, The Nation, New England Review, the Paris Review, “poem-a-day” series for the Academy of American Poets on poets.org, Prairie Schooner, and RHINO. She received a City Corps Artist Grant in poetry from NYFA and a Café Royal Cultural Foundation Grant for Literature in 2021. For the past ten years, she has taught manuscript revision at the Hudson Valley Writers Center, where she runs the reading series and serves as Program Director. She also teaches in Manhattanville’s MFA program. She lives with her husband and daughter in New York City. Her website is jenniferfranklinpoet.com.
Rushi Vyas was born in Toledo, Ohio. He is co-author of the chapbook Between Us, Not Half a Saint (GASHER Press, 2021) with Rajiv Mohabir, and his poem “Morning Chant: Scatter” was republished as a broadside by the Center for Book Arts. He earned his MFA from the University of Colorado-Boulder and his BS from the University of Michigan. His poems have been published in Adroit Journal, The Georgia Review, Indiana Review, Landfall (NZ), The Offing, The Spinoff (NZ), Tin House, and elsewhere. He has worked as a career counselor, curriculum developer, editor, and facilitator. In 2019, Rushi moved from Brooklyn, New York, to Ōtepoti Dunedin, Aotearoa New Zealand, where he currently lives, writes, and teaches.
Rob Schlegel lives in the Pacific Northwest and is the author of three previous collections of poetry, including January Machine (Four Way Books, 2014). With the poets Rawaan Alkhatib and Daniel Poppick, he co-edits the Catenary Press.
Paperback
Hardcover
In this electrifying debut, lyric works to untangle slippery personal and political histories in the wake of a parent’s suicide.
Crackling with the hypervigilance of parenthood, Childcare explores the paradox at the root of raising kids: the joy of new life accompanies an awareness of potential loss. Rob Schlegel’s fourth collection observes the tangled emotions of fatherhood; even as he wonders at the strange intelligence of youth, he elegizes the present moment.