"Tom Sleigh on Poetry, Journalism, and Conflict"
A free virtual event hosted by Fairfield University MFA Program's Phil Klay
7:30 PM - 8:30 PM EST

Register Here

What are the ethics of writing about war and atrocity, and what can we learn from both journalistic and poetic approaches to conflict? Award-winning poet and journalist Tom Sleigh, recipient of the Kingsley Tufts Award, Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, John Updike Award and Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, has written powerful and complex work about conflict across his distinguished career. He will discuss writing conflict with Fairfield professor and National Book Award-winning author Phil Klay.

2023 Paterson Poetry Prize winner Tom Sleigh will be leading both a workshop and reading as part of The Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College Distinguished Poets Series.
Both events will be held Saturday April 6th at The Hamilton Club (2nd floor), 32 Church Street, Paterson, NJ 07505. Click here for detailed directions and parking information.

Workshop: 10am-12pm
$20, Registration Required
Enrollment is limited. Early registration recommended.
Download Registration Form
Email Smita Desai sdesai@pccc.edu for registration availability.
Coffee, tea, and a light breakfast will be provided for workshop participants.

Reading: 1pm-3pm
Free, Open to the Public (18 & older)

Join us as Troubadour International Poetry Prize winners/commendeds Zoom in from Britain, Ireland, US, Canada & Australia along with judges, poets Mona Arshi (Cambridge) & Tom Sleigh (New York), for a celebratory prize-night reading on Tuesday March 26th!

Free online event, but Zoom numbers are limited. Advance booking only. Please book ASAP by emailing info@coffeehousepoetry.org for link.

• First Prize, £2,000, Traceries, Jennifer Harrison, Windsor, Victoria, Australia

• Second Prize, £1000, A child’s Christmas in alcohol, Simon Walsh, Brattleboro VT, USA

• Third Prize, £500, Zebra haworthia, Jane Wilkinson, Norwich

This event is listed as 3 PM in EST, New York, USA. Please note additional time zone information:

•  8 PM GMT London, UK

• 7 AM EDT (GMT +11) Tasmania, Australia

Readings and judges' comments from this year's judges:

Mona Arshi worked as a Human Rights lawyer at Liberty before starting to write poetry: her collection, Small Hands, won the 2015 Forward Prize, her poems have featured in Poems on the Underground, she was recently commissioned to write a programme on The Odyssey for BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week & she is Visiting Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College Cambridge. Her latest poetry collection, Dear Big Gods (Pavilion Poetry, 2019), was followed by her debut novel, Somebody Loves You, in 2021.

Tom Sleigh’s ten poetry collections include House of Fact, House of Ruin, Station Zed , and Paterson Poetry Prize winner The King’s Touch (Graywolf, 2022). He is the author of the essay collections The Land Between Two Rivers and Interview with a Ghost. A Distinguished Professor in the MFA Program at Hunter College (City University of New York), Tom lives in Brooklyn, and during the last ten years, has also worked as a journalist in Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, Kenya, Iraq, and Libya.

Panoptic Verses, An Evening of Poetry

Wednesday October 25th, 7:30pm-9:00pm

Michael Chang, Ry Cook, William Hempel, Zachary Issenberg, David Joez Villaverde, Max Kruger-Dull, Alonso Llerena, Tom Sleigh, Ben Tripp, Dareece Walker

Organized with Corey Serrant

173 Henry St., New York, NY 10002

Visual artist Nene Humphrey and poet Tom Sleigh have spent many years thinking about the biological and psychological aspects of how and why we dream. In collaboration with the LeDoux Neuroscience Lab, Humphrey has done extensive research into various theories of dreaming, and how we are hardwired to want to sing together. For Sleigh, too, dream and song are essential to his understanding of how poetry transforms our knowledge of the body and of our emotions into memorable speech. Through visual art and poetry, Humphrey and Sleigh will be in conversation about the inner workings of the psyche and its biological underpinnings.

Save the date for a reading with writer Sarah Harwell and poet Tom Sleigh on May 4th, 5-7 p.m. at Nohra Haime Gallery in celebration of artist Lesley Dill's new show Ascend: Until the Urge to Rise Meets the Urge to Fall. 

Ms. Harwell will be reading from her new book of short stories, Delay, and Mr. Sleigh will read from his most recent book of poems, The King's Touch, as well as new work. 

Event Location: NOHRA HAIME GALLERY, 500 West 21st street, New York NY 10011

New Poetry from Graywolf Press

Featuring: Tom Sleigh, Courtney Faye Taylor, Stephanie Burt, Monica Youn)

Five extraordinary poets read from their collections recently published by Graywolf Press, a leading independent publisher based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Wide-ranging in their form, subject matter, and career stage, these writers' recent works interrogate the responsibility and complicity of the poet as witness, explore myths both new and ancient, and discover new ways of approaching documentary, elegy, and enduring political questions of our time.

12:10 pm to 1:25 pm
Rooms 443-444, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 4

“Documentary Poetics: On Sexuality, Space, and Survival”: Erika Meitner, Tom Sleigh, Diane Thiel & Seema Yasmin

For eight days every November, Miami Book Fair welcomes tens of thousand of fairgoers to a literary wonderland, both downtown and online. The fair hosts hundreds of diverse, critically acclaimed authors facilitating conversations about politics, pop culture, and all manner of impactful prose.

This year’s fair takes place November 13-20. Tom (The King’s Touch) will be participating in “Documentary Poetics: On Sexuality, Space, and Survival,” an event with writers Erika Meitner (Useful Junk), Diane Thiel (Questions From Outer Space) and Seema Yasmin (If God is a Virus).

Sunday, November 20 @ 2:30 pm
Room 6100 (Building 6, 1st Floor)
300 NE Second Ave., Miami, FL 33132 United States (map)

Buy Tickets, Download the Fair Guide, and Learn More about the Fair.

Tom Sleigh joins the American String Quartet with a meditative reading on human conflict and healing

Internationally recognized as one of the world's foremost quartets, we celebrate the American String Quartet's 18th appearance on the Fabbri Concert Series. Join us for Bach, Barber, Bartok, Shostakovich and Beethoven as poet and journalist Tom Sleigh weaves music with words in a meditation on human conflict and healing the wounds of war.

This concert will take place at House of the Redeemer, 7 East 95th Street, New York, NY 10128
View Map

All tickets are $40 and include admission to a candlelight reception with the artists.
Seating for all concerts is very limited—we encourage advance ticket purchase.
Purchase your tickets today

Based at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA, Fall for the Book is an independent non-profit literary arts organization that promotes reading by sponsoring a variety of year-round events and activities, the flagship of which is the Fall for the Book festival held each October.

This year Tom Sleigh will participate in the reading and conversation Battling for the Future Through Poetry. From the threats of climate change to California and the globe, to overflowing pandemic morgues, to the frontlines of the refugee crisis, urgent themes permeate the poetry collections The King’s Touch by Tom Sleigh, and Look at this Blue by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke. In discussing The King’s Touch, Ploughshares’ Philip Levine says, “I am struck by the human dramas that are enacted in these poems, the deep encounters that often shatter the participants and occasionally restore them.” Craig Santos Perez calls Hedge Coke “one of the most important and innovative environmental writers of our time. Look at This Blue urgently asks us to see the wondrous biodiversity of the planet amidst the violent ravages of colonialism, capitalism, and ecological imperialism.”

Location: Johnson Center, 3rd Floor, Meeting Room C. 4477 Aquia Creek Lane, Fairfax. (map)

The Museum of Contemporary Religious Art (MOCRA) is pleased to welcome acclaimed visual artist Lesley Dill, poet Tom Sleigh and Rene Paul Barilleaux, head of curatorial affairs at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas for a virtual, Zoom-based presentation. MOCRA Director David Brinker will guide the conversation. 

The event is presented in conjunction with the MOCRA exhibition, “Lesley Dill: Dream World of the Forest,” on display through Oct. 16, 2022. Dill is renowned for incorporating text—particularly poetry—into all of her artwork. “Dream World of the Forest” includes two large pieces that interweave painted words from Sleigh’s poems with hand-cut paper imagery.

Register for this free virtual event
Thursday, September 29th
8 PM EST/ 7 PM CST

Tom Sleigh will read from his recent book, The King's Touch, as part of Bryant Park's Reading Room Summer Poetry series featuring award-winning poetry by established and emerging poets throughout the summer.

The event is hosted by Jason Schneiderman and also features poets Peter Coyote, Kate Gale, and Tawanda Mulalu.

All readings are free and open to the public. Books are available to purchase and for signing by the poets. Readings will take place on the Upper Terrace. https://bryantpark.org/the-park#park-map

Part of the Poetry program.

From Coffee-House Poetry organizer, Anne-Marie Fyfe: Two poets, two new collections, & a change in our transatlantic format as US poet, Tom Sleigh, & Coffee-House Poetry’s London-based Irish poet Cahal Dallat — who’s interviewed our guests for many years — both read from their latest publications & talk about their own & each other’s work/writing-lives.

free online event, numbers limited, advance booking only, email info@coffeehousepoetry.org & Zoom link will be forwarded.

Please note this event will take place at 3pm EST/8pm UK

• Tom Sleigh’s poetry collections, include House of Fact, House of Ruin, Station Zed &, just published, The King’s Touch (Graywolf, Feb 2022): he is the author of the essay collections The Land between Two Rivers & Interview with a Ghost. A Distinguished Professor in the MFA Program at Hunter College, Tom lives in Brooklyn, & during the last eight years, he has also worked as a journalist in Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, Kenya, Iraq, & Libya.

• Cahal Dallat’s latest collection is Beautiful Lofty Things from Salmon Poetry. Poet, musician & critic, he is founder/organiser of WB Yeats Bedford Park Artwork Project, winner of the 2017 Keats-Shelley Prize, & a regular BBC R4 contributor. He has been Writer-in-Residence at Lenoir-Rhyne University, Hickory NC & a Harry Ransom Center Research Fellow at the University of Texas, Austin TX. His previous poetry collections include The Year of Not Dancing & Morning Star.

Please join us for our reading with Stuart Dischell, Martin Edmunds, and Tom Sleigh.
Click to learn about the authors.

This reading will take place both in person and virtually.

Register for the In Person Event Please provide proof of vaccination at the door. Masks are required for the duration of the event. Please sign up ahead of time because there is limited space.

Register for the Virtual Event

The Global Poetry Consortium at Birch Wathen Lenox School invites you to join in the livestream of a multi-faceted event featuring dance, poetry, and chamber music.

Poetry readings by Tom Sleigh will be interspersed with performances by Alvin Ailey dancers and a performance of Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time (Quatuor pour la fin du temps) by the ArtsAhimsa musicians.

Click here to join livestream April 22nd at 1:00PM EST

ArtsAhimsa artists: Pedro Ruiz, choreographer; Elisa Toro Franky, dancer; Leonel Linares, dancer; Laura Jean Goldberg, violin; Moshe S. Knoll, piano ; Anton Rist, clarinet; Kate Dillingham, cello; Taka Kigawa, piano

The Global Poetry Consortium is an organization comprised of leading independent schools committed to innovation and cultural exchange through poetry. We strive to bridge the divide between technology and the literary arts by encouraging our students to engage in interdisciplinary thought and writing. We accomplish this through online workshops, an annual Poetry Festival, and an annual journal.

Named one of the best reading series in NYC by Time Out New York, the Brooklyn Poets Reading Series is free and open to the public. Each reading features three poets, with at least one from Brooklyn and one from outside the borough, pairing emerging with more established poets and focusing on those from underrepresented communities. Readings are curated and emceed by Brooklyn Poets Executive Director Jason Koo.

This reading is virtual and features Ananda Lima, Eugenia Leigh, & Tom Sleigh.

Learn about the authors.

Register for the Zoom event.

Join the livestream of this exciting PoemJazz program featuring esteemed poet Robert Pinsky and Grammy-winning trumpeter Jim Seeley. The program will be followed by a conversation moderated by award-winning poet Tom Sleigh.

This event will begin at 9:45am EST; conversation segment to follow approx. 10:45am EST.

Click to join livestream of PoemJazz program at 9:45am EST

Click to join livestream of Conversation at 10:45am EST

The Global Poetry Consortium is an organization comprised of leading independent schools committed to innovation and cultural exchange through poetry. We strive to bridge the divide between technology and the literary arts by encouraging our students to engage in interdisciplinary thought and writing. We accomplish this through online workshops, an annual Poetry Festival, and an annual journal.

We're pleased to welcome Tom Sleigh & Abby Seiff to our At Home with Literati Series in support of The King's Touch and Troubling the Water: A Dying Lake and a Vanishing World in Cambodia. They will discuss the intersections of their work and approaches to journalistic writing.

Click here to join the webinar event on 4/1. 7pm EST. No pre-registration required!

Note: we are now hosting on Zoom webinars. You will be prompted to enter a first name and email upon joining. You may then see a window reading "waiting for host to start webinar," but sit tight--you will be admitted as soon as we begin broadcasting live! You will be able to submit questions using the Q&A feature.

Abby Seiff is a journalist who was based in Southeast Asia for nearly a decade, working as an editor at the Cambodia Daily and the Phnom Penh Post and writing for publications such as Time, the Economist, Al Jazeera, and Pacific Standard, among others. She is now a freelance correspondent.

To sustain programming, donate here.

For over a quarter of a century, the University of Southern California Department of English has hosted the Magill Poetry Series, welcoming poets from all over the world.

We hold this annual poetry reading to honor the memory of Dr. Frank Magill and his extraordinary commitment to and passion for poetry. Jim Magill, Frank’s son, has continued his own dedication to this series and its recognition of the importance of poetry in the life of our culture.

The featured poet of 2022 is Tom Sleigh!

Please note, this reading is 4pm Pacific Daylight Time.

Tom Sleigh reads from The King’s Touch, with Alan Shapiro, author of Proceed to Check Out.

This event will be held in person. Admission is $3. Please register here (registration form is below the Spring 2022 Schedule).

Founded in 1973, the award-winning Blacksmith House Poetry Series brings established and emerging writers of poetry and fiction to Harvard Square. The series is named after the Blacksmith House at 56 Brattle Street, site of the village smithy and spreading chestnut tree of Longfellow’s 1839 poem "The Village Blacksmith."

Purchase The King’s Touch
Purchase Proceed to Check Out

Tom Sleigh will read from his new book of poetry, The King’s Touch as part of the Hunter College Distinguished Writers Series.

7:30pm in the 8th Floor Faculty Dining Room, Hunter West Building, Hunter College at 68th St. and Lexington Ave.

Closest subways: 6 train to 68th St.; Q and F trains to Lexington Ave./63rd St
All visitors to campus must wear a mask at all times and fill out the info at the following link:

https://www.c4wrk.com/7rzQF3LbEJveyqSn8

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED.

The March 3rd Book Launch will NOT take place. Please check back for rescheduling updates.

On Thursday February 24th, Tom Sleigh will read from his latest book of poetry, The King’s Touch as part of the Modern Masters Reading Series. The event will begin at 6pm in the 4th Floor Program Room in the Andrew White Student Center on the Evergreen Campus. Directions and Map Download

This event is open to the public; no registration necessary. Anyone attending or coming onto campus must wear an N95 mask.

Announcement from the 49th Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900:

On Wednesday, February 23, we will hold a one-day virtual pre-conference in advance of our traditional in-person event. In addition to two exciting virtual panels, we are delighted to announce that Tom Sleigh will be reading from 3:30 to 4:30.  This keynote event will cap what is sure to be a stimulating slate of programming.  Please mark your calendars.

Click here to join Zoom event

*This event is both in person and livestreamed*

Tom Sleigh will read from his newest book of poetry, The King’s Touch. There will be a conversation after the reading with Sven Birkerts.

Sven Birkerts is the author of eleven books, most recently a meditation on Nabokov’s Speak, Memory in Ig Publishing’s ‘Bookmarked’ series. Co-editor of the journal AGNI, he lives in Amherst with his wife.

The event will be held in Weinstein Auditorium in Wright Hall on the Smith College campus. Doors open at 6:30 pm. This event is free and open to the fully vaccinated community. You must have your vaccination card with you to be admitted to the event. Capacity will be limited to 185 guests.

Livestreams will be available on the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center Facebook page and YouTube channel.

Tom Sleigh will read from The King's Touch as part of the KGB Monday Night Poetry Series
With Andrea Cohen and Star Black

Doors open at 7pm, Readings begin at 7:30pm

Can’t attend in person? Join via Zoom

This event is Virtual. Register here.

Visiting Writers Asako Serizawa and Tom Sleigh

Join us for this special reading by two past Fellows and award-winning writers, Asako Serizawa and Tom Sleigh.

Asako Serizawa's debut book of fiction, Inheritors, won the PEN/Open Book Award and The Story Prize Spotlight Award, and was a Massachusetts Book Awards Honors Book. She is a 2022 National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient, and has also been awarded two O. Henry Prizes; a Pushcart Prize; and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award.

Tom Sleigh's books include The King’s Touch (Graywolf Press, February 1, 2022); House of Fact, House of Ruin; Station Zed; and Army Cats. His most recent book of essays is The Land Between Two Rivers: Writing In an Age of Refugees. A Kingsley Tufts Award winner, past Guggenheim Fellow, and Lila Wallace Award recipient, Sleigh was also awarded two NEA grants in poetry. He is a Distinguished Professor in the MFA Program at Hunter College.

For more information please visit Fine Arts Work Center Events

The American String Quartet and Tom Sleigh present “War and Healing”. Music by Bach, Barber, Shostakovich, Beethoven, and Sirota. Readings by Tom Sleigh.

Purchase tickets.

Venue and Directions

Photo by Peter Schaaf