This conversation will explore friendship and community in poetry, inspired by a line from Maya Salameh’s poem “WHY AREN’T Y’ALL DRIVING YOUR FRIENDS TO THE AIRPORT???” What opportunities open up when non-romantic love — from friendship to solidarity — is explored in verse? This free hour-long conversation will also include time for audience Q&A.

RSVP here: https://unlv.zoom.us/meeting/register/sJfhqLfsTpCehHg0Iuj1wQ#/registration

Maya Salameh is the author of Mermaid Theory (Haymarket Books, 2026), How to Make an Algorithm in the Microwave (University of Arkansas Press, 2022), winner of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize, and the chapbook rooh (Paper Nautilus Press, 2020). She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, and the President’s Committee for the Arts and Humanities, and served as a National Student Poet, America’s highest honor for youth poets. Her work has appeared in The Offing, Poetry, Gulf Coast, The Rumpus, AGNI, Mizna, and the LA Times, among others.

KB Brookins is a Black queer and trans writer, educator, and cultural worker from Texas. KB’s chapbook How To Identify Yourself with a Wound won the Saguaro Poetry Prize, a Writer’s League of Texas Discovery Prize, and a Stonewall Honor Book Award. Their debut collection Freedom House won the American Library Association Barbara Gittings Literature Award and the Texas Institute of Letters Award for Best First Book of Poetry. KB’s memoir Pretty (Alfred A. Knopf, 2024) won the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award and the Dorothy Allison/Felice Picano Emerging Writer Award.