Aimee Nezhukumatathil is no stranger to the Palm Beach Poetry Festival. She taught workshops here in 2014 and 2018, and next year she returns as the 18thAnnual Festival’s Poet-at-Large. Ideally, the Poet-at-Large visits several schools to share and discuss poetry with hundreds of young people. Since we’ll be virtual again in 2022, Aimee will deliver a remote poetry reading live-streamed into the classrooms of Palm Beach County Schools. On the evening of Saturday , January 15th, she also will present A Reading to Remember to festival participants and the public via Zoom Webinar. Serving as Poet-at-Large places Aimee Nezhukumatathil in the company of other esteemed poets who filled this role: Tyehimba Jess, Patricia Smith, and Brian Turner.
Aimee is an ideal person to interact with young people. With her new book, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks and Other Astonishments, she hopes to inspire readers with awe for the natural world. In an interview with Morning Edition’s Rachel Martin, she says, “I think so much terror, so much hate and fear towards each other and towards other cultures has been from a lack of wonder and imagination.” Aimee tells many stories that support her idea. A mother, a teacher, a woman of color and a brilliant writer, Nezhukumatathil is certain to connect with audiences through her exquisitely crafted words on the topics of cultural nuance and nature’s beauty.
Stay tuned for more information on Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Poet-at-Large, 18thAnnual Palm Beach Poetry Festival. We look forward to filling you with wonder and imagination.
AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL (pronounced neh-ZOO / koo-mah / tah-TILL) is the author of four poetry collections: Oceanic (Copper Canyon 2018), Lucky Fish (2011), winner of the gold medal in Poetry from the Independent Publisher Book Awards and the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize for Independent Books; At the Drive In Volcano (2007), winner of the Balcones Prize; and Miracle Fruit (2003), winner of the Tupelo Press Prize, ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Award, the Global Filipino Award and a finalist for The Glasgow Prize and the Asian American Literary Award. Her most recent chapbook is Lace & Pyrite, a collaboration of nature poems with the poet Ross Gay. She is the poetry editor of Orion magazine and her poems have appeared in the Best American Poetry series, American Poetry Review, New England Review, Poetry, Ploughshares,and Tin House.
In 2016-17, Nezhukumatathil has served as the Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi’s MFA program in creative writing. In Fall 2017, she joined the MFA program of the University of Mississippi as full professor. Nezhukumatathil’s first nonfiction book, World of Wonders (Milkweed Press, 2020), is an illustrated collection of nature essays told in the context of her unusual childhood growing up on the grounds of mental institutions in rural America and navigating the parent-push towards science while finding herself drawn toward language—all unfolding through detailed and delightful observations about the oddities and fascinations of our planet.
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