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Join Persea Books and Creative Writing at The New School for a celebration of independent publishing and three new books from Persea authors. Poetry Editor Gabriel Fried will introduce Elizabeth Bradfield, reading from her new book SOFAR, Michelle Peñaloza, winner of the Persea Lexi Rudnitsky Editor's Choice and the James Laughlin Awards for All the Words I Can Remember Are Poems, and Carey Salerno, reading from her new book The Hungriest Stars. Persea is an independent, literary publishing house founded in 1975 by Michael Braziller and Karen Braziller, who still own and direct the company. Persea books focus on contemporary issues expressed through individual experience. Their list spans poetry, fiction, essays, memoir, biography, and more, reflecting the diversity of American literature, as well as literature (in translation) from around the world..
Presented by the Creative Writing Program at The New School for Social Research.
The New School offered the first academic creative writing workshop in 1931 and pioneered a new philosophy of education. The idea: students would make their own lives and their own stories part of their education. Today, The New School continues to celebrate and cultivate daring and diverse new voices through its Creative Writing program. The value of this approach is reflected in the publications and achievements of our MFA Creative Writing graduates and faculty.
Visit New School Writing, the blog of the MFA Creative Writing Program, for interviews, profiles, and a digital bookshelf featuring the New School writing community.
Discover more Creative Writing Program events here.
Committed to amplifying diverse voices, The New School offers more than a thousand public programs and events each year, providing fresh perspectives and unique learning opportunities. These lectures, exhibitions, concerts, and performances feature prominent and emerging artists, activists, and thought leaders.
To receive updates about public programs and events at The New School, subscribe to our mailing list. Visit our Livestream and YouTube channels to watch select events live and recorded.
Michelle Peñaloza is the author of Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire, winner of the 2018 Hillary Gravendyk National Poetry Prize, and the chapbook landscape/heartbreak. Some of her honors include the Poetry Foundation’s Frederick Bock Prize and grants from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Philippine American Writers and Artists (PAWA), and the Community Foundation of Mendocino County. The proud daughter of Filipino immigrants, born in the suburbs of Detroit and raised in Nashville, she lives in Covelo, California.
Carey Salerno is the author of two previous books of poetry, Tributary and Shelter. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, The Georgia Review, Harvard Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. Salerno is the recipient of a 2025 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She is Executive Director and Publisher of Alice James Books.
Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of Toward Antarctica, Once Removed, Approaching Ice, Interpretive Work (winner of the Audre Lorde Prize), and Theorem, a collaboration with artist Antonia Contro. She has co-edited the anthologies Broadsided Press: Fifteen Years of Poetic/Artistic Collaboration, 2005-2020 and Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology and Poetry (winner of a Pacific Northwest Book Award). Founder and editor-in-chief of Broadsided, she lives on Cape Cod, teaches creative writing at Brandeis University, and balances her work as a writer with work as a naturalist and field assistant at home and afar.
Gabriel Fried is the Poetry Editor. He joined Persea in 1999. He has also acquired and edited fiction and nonfiction for the press. He is the author of two collections of poetry, The Children Are Reading and Making the New Lamb Take, and the editor of an anthology, Heart of the Order: Baseball Poems. His poems appear in American Poetry Review, The American Scholar, Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, Tin House, and elsewhere.
