The Festival

Presently in our 16th year, the Annual Palm Beach Poetry Festival is presented in partnership with Old School Square in the heart of Delray Beach, Florida. Our audiences experience America’s best poets up-close … powerful, moving voices … at the festival in January, and throughout the year in our Community Outreach Program.

The 16th Annual Palm Beach Poetry Festival will kick off January 20-25, 2020. Applications for 2020 are now open. Workshop Faculty for 2020 includes: Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Nickole Brown, Reginald Gibbons, Jessica Jacobs, Major Jackson, Ilya Kaminsky, Dana Levin, Adrian Matejka, and Maggie Smith.  Hopefully, the number of applicants will require adding an additional workshop.  Our Special Guest Poet will be Joy Harjo who just became a Chancellor of the Academy.  Patricia Smith will be the festival Poet-at-Large.

This year’s Special Guest is Joy Harjo, recently named Poet Laureate of the United States, the first Native American poet to hold this post. Programs off site throughout the week will include the High School Poetry Program in which award-winning poet Patricia Smith, Poet-At-Large, who will visit schools in Palm Beach County and give a reading on the festival stage on Friday evening. Individual Conference Faculty includes Lorna Knowles Blake, Sally Bliumis-Dunn, and Angela Narciso-Torres.

The festival week includes six days of workshops, readings, craft talks, conferences, panel discussion, social events and so much more. Plan to apply to attend a workshop today and to focus on your work with an extraordinary faculty workshop leader.