Evan Neiden (they/them) is an NYC-based writer and performance artist. They make poems out of Jewish folk tales, big band music, childhood synesthesia, black licorice, and wrong numbers. Sometimes they go by "january blue."

Shari Caplan (she/her) is the siren behind 'Advice from a Siren’ (Dancing Girl Press). Her poems have swum into Gulf Coast, Painted Bride Quarterly, Angime, Drunk Monkeys, and elsewhere. Shari’s work has earned her a scholarship to The Home School, a fellowship to The Vermont Studio Center, as well as nominations for a Bettering American Poetry Award, a Rhylsing Award, and a Pushcart Prize. She proudly serves as Madam Betty BOOM, the “Miss Congeniality” of the Poetry Brothel, here to abolish Puritanism (and other icky isms!). Madam Betty BOOM wants YOU! to come to the Poetry Brothel in Boston. Follow her at sharicaplan.com and @MadamBettyBOOM on Instagram.

Stephanie Berger is a poet, experience creator, and entrepreneur. She earned a B.A. in Philosophy at the University of Southern California, received an M.F.A. in Poetry from the New School, and before founding The Poetry Society of New York, she taught in the English Department at Pace University. Stephanie is currently the CEO of The Poetry Society of New York and co-creator with Nicholas Adamski of The Poetry Brothel, The New York City Poetry Festival, and The Typewriter Project. She is the author of IN THE MADAME’S HAT BOX (Dancing Girl Press, 2011) and co-author with Carina Finn of THE GREY BIRD: THIRTEEN EMOJI POEMS IN TRANSLATION (Coconut Books, 2014). With Jackie Braje, she founded Milk Press, a publisher and nurturer of poetic collaborations.

Jackie Braje is a Brooklyn based poet-person, the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Milk Press, the Programs Director for The Poetry Society of New York, and guardian of Bird, the dog. Outside the Orb of Poetry, she is also a freelance editor, publishing PR associate, adjunct English professor at Brooklyn College, and Kate Bush enthusiast.

Jane Brinkley is an incoming sophomore at Smith College studying English and poetry. Her written work has garnered highest honors with organizations like the American Theater Wing, the Blank Theater, and the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. She joined PSNY as a festival development intern in the spring.

Sadhika Ganguli is a rising freshman at Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has been published in Snapdragon: A Journal of Art & Healing, The Athena Review, For Women Who Roar, The Sheepshead Review, and the Jessie H. Butler Poetry Contest anthology. She is a proud woman of color and poetry is her passion. Writing, in general, has not only gotten her through tough times but has been able to complement the good in her life.

Esther Eidenberg-Noppe (they/them) interned at Youth Speaks Seattle, a non-profit poetry organization for two years, and was on the 2018 team representing Seattle at Brave New Voices, an international poetry-slam competition. Esther has been published in the 2019 anthology “Thriving While Trans” and the Sarah Lawrence College literary magazine Love and Squalor.

Brandon James O’Neil is from New York City and currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Iowa, working remotely from the Upper West Side. His husband—a medical resident at Mount Sinai West—and himself were married in December 2019, roughly three months before the outbreak of COVID-19 and spent the duration of the global pandemic in their studio. Brandon’s poems grew out of those months of isolation, protest, and uncertainty. His work has appeared in Image, Psychological Perspectives, and Plough and his poem "Cats" won the First Line poetry contest from Alexandria Quarterly.

Kevin R. Farrell, Jr. is a New York based artist, poet, and educator whose work has been published in BONED – Every Which Way, Burning House Press, Rumble Fish Quarterly, Adroit Journal, Ink in Thirds Magazine, Foxhole Magazine, Yo-NEWYORK! and others. In 2021 Farrell released Best of the Worst, now in its second pressing, which consists of 20 poems that have risen to the top of the trash heap that is his constant documentation of a life spent toeing the line between spiritual bliss and emotional upheaval. His new book Top of the Heap is scheduled for a June 2021 release. As a recovering addict each day can be a struggle when dealing with the dumpster fire that is modern day existence. Sometimes Farrell attempts to put out the fire, on other days he warms his hands by the flames.

Ash Freeman is a junior at Sarah Lawrence College. They are originally from Miami, Florida but mostly write about their time spent in Michigan and the queer pastoral. They are the Editor-in-Chief of Love & Squalor. Their submission encapsulates their writing as a whole: honest, obsessed with love, and almost grotesque.

Sharon Mesmer's most recent poetry collection, Greetings From My Girlie Leisure Place, was voted "Best of 2015" by Entropy. She's the author of several other poetry books, as well as three fiction collections including Ma Vie à Yonago, in French translation from Hachette. Four of her poems appear in Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology (second edition). Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine/The Cut, the Paris Review, and the American Poetry Review. Her current manuscript-in-progress, Even Living Makes Me Die, contains poems dedicated to 37 "under-known" women poets of the Americans, from Canada to Chile, from the 19th century to the present. She teaches creative writing at NYU and the New School.

Originally from Minnesota, Greer McAllister is currently earning a Bachelor of Arts with a focus in creative writing and literature at Sarah Lawrence College.

Not Sure Where To Spend Your Summer Weekend at the NYC PoFest? Let the Tarot Decide! | Clickbait is a blog designed to shamelessly attract attention to poetry. Using devices typically reserved for online “clickbait” like listicles, how-to’s, trending topics, SEO, hashtags, hyperlinks, hyperbole, sensationalism, puff, and fluff, the poets at The Poetry Society of New York are having a little fun.

Halim Madi is a queer Arab poet. He grew up in Beirut, Lebanon, left at 17 to study in Paris and Toronto and worked in London and Sao Paulo. He now lives in San Francisco. Halim is a TED speaker, a product manager at Oculus working on the future of virtual reality, and a poet. In 2019, he asked his friends for crowdfunding support and wrote "Flight of the Jaguar". The story of what happened during these 14 years. The space between being a poet and becoming a poet. The leap of a cat. In 2020, also with friends’ support, he wrote and published "In the Name of Scandal", a collection of poems about sluthood, the immigrant identity, queerness and plants that make you see colors.