Antoinette Brim-Bell
Antoinette Brim-Bell (Antoinette Brim), Connecticut’s 8th State Poet Laureate (2022-2025), is the author of three full-length poetry collections: These Women You Gave Me, Icarus in Love, and Psalm of the Sunflower. Her poetry has appeared in various journals, magazines, textbooks, and anthologies, as well as in Poetry Magazine and Poem-a-Day. Brim-Bell has also published critical works, “The Myopic Eye in Alice Walker’s ‘Flowers’” (Critical Insights: Alice Walker, Salem Press) and “Juxtaposed Dichotomies: the idealized white suburban pastoral, the surrealist tableau of Black Poverty & the Women in between” (The Whiskey of Our Discontent: Gwendolyn Brooks as Conscience and Change Agent, Haymarket Books). Brim-Bell has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize for both poetry and essay. She is a Cave Canem Foundation Fellow and an alum of Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA).
Brim-Bell hosted a series of Black History Month television programs for the OneWorld Progressive Institute. She is also a former guest host of Patrick Oliver’s Literary Nation Talk Radio (KABF 88.3, Little Rock), for which she interviewed a variety of entertainers, literary figures, political pundits, and community developers.
Additionally, In Her Image, a ballet based on Brim-Bell’s These Women You Gave Me, choreographed by Sarah Grace and commissioned by the New England Ballet Theatre, was performed in Connecticut and on the renowned Alvin Ailey stage in New York City.
A printmaker and collage artist, Brim-Bell exhibited poetry and/or monoprints in various exhibits, including the Artist-Poet Exhibit at the Eureka Gallery at Art Center East, Jazz: An Exhibition of Poetry, Prints, and Photography at the Sumner McKnight Crosby Jr. Gallery in New Haven, CT, and Sheroes, in partnership with the Alliance of Women Veterans at the Grove in New Haven, CT.
She is a past Board Member of OneWorld Progressive Institute and a past President of the Creative Arts Workshop Board of Directors in New Haven, CT. A sought-after speaker, editor, educator, and consultant, Brim-Bell is a Professor of English at CT State Community College, Capital. www.antoinettebrimbell.com.
Joan Kwon Glass
Joan Kwon Glass is a diasporic, mixed-race, Korean American poet, author of the poetry collection Daughter of Three Gone Kingdoms which won the Paterson Poetry Prize & the Eric Hoffer Book Award for Poetry & was a finalist for the Balcones Poetry Prize. Her poetry collection, NIGHT SWIM, won the Diode Book Prize. Joan’s poems are forthcoming or have been featured on NPR, Poetry Daily, Best American Poetry & The Slowdown & in Poetry, Passages North, Poetry Northwest, Korea Quarterly, Split Lip, Prairie Schooner & elsewhere. She has been a featured reader at the Westchester Poetry Festival, the Brooklyn Poets Poetry Festival, the Manhattanville College Poetry Festival & the Poetry by the Sea conference & is a 2025 SWWIM writer in residence. Joan has served or is scheduled to serve as a visiting writer at Amherst College, Smith College, Wesleyan University, The New School, West Chester University & UCONN. She teaches workshops at writing centers such as Brooklyn Poets, Poets House & Hudson Valley Writers Center & lives in Milford, CT.