DADA

Come celebrate Persian New Year with new translations of Hafez by Roger Sedarat and a book launch for Kate Deimling's collection Time Traveling. Poets Neda Zahraie, Jacqui Cornetta, and Nicole Cooley will also read new work. Let's raise a glass—may the new year be a poetic one! ~~~ Nicole Cooley grew up in New Orleans and is the author of eight books of poems, most recently MOTHER WATER ASH (Louisiana State University Press 2024) and the forthcoming collection TRASH (Alice James Books 2027). She teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College, City University of New York.

Jacqui Cornetta has recently published writing and translations from Spanish at The Erotic Review, Words Without Borders, and Hazlitt. Their translation of María Miranda's Pools comes out with A Perfect Vacuum in Fall 2026. They have a studio-recording of harp, electronics, and voice, entitled Three Visions, out with Lattice Grove Records in April 2026 and a sonic and textual investigation of the Aeolian harp—that is, a harp played by the wind—coming out with Lateral Addition this summer. Jacqui teaches writing and translation at Queens College CUNY and is a student at the Bard College MFA in Music/Sound.

Kate Deimling is a poet and translator. Her debut poetry collection, Time Traveling, came out with Cornerstone Press in January. She is co-editor of Bracken magazine, and her work is forthcoming in Best Literary Translations 2026. She holds a PhD in French literature from Columbia University and has translated several books from French, including a history of color charts and an eighteenth-century novel. A native New Orleanian and longtime Brooklynite, Kate enjoys seeing nature in the city and hanging out with her dog.

Roger Sedarat is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Haji as Puppet: an Orientalist Burlesque, which won the Word Works' Tenth Gate Prize for a Mid-Career poet. A recipient of the Willis Barnstone Prize for Translation, his renderings of classical and contemporary Persian have appeared in such journals as Poetry, Michigan Quarterly Review, and The Brooklyn Rail. His new translated collection, These Garden Nights: Ghazals of Hafez, has just been published. He teaches American literature, poetry, and literary translation at Queens College, City University of New York.

Multidisciplinary artist and writer Neda Zahraie was born in New York City in and raised in Tehran, Iran. Her written works include Bar Scraps & Bathroom Confessionals (2010) and the hybrid poem, Anamnèse (forthcoming from Vulture Culture Press 2026) ; her recorded works include Dance & Despair (Kamalata forthcoming 2026), Red Lips (Kamalata 2016), Freedom (Chic Choc 2022). She is the founder of the weekly reading series DADA Literary Café, and founding member/editor of OyeDrum intersectional feminist magazine. She lives with artist Emil Bovbjerg and their daughter Djuna in Ridgewood, NYC.