kiss & release: A Reading with Anthony DiPietro and Chen Chen

In celebration of National Poetry Month and serving as a preamble to the Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts at Brandeis, the Rose Art Museum presents kiss & release: A Reading with Anthony DiPietro and Chen Chen.

DiPietro, the Rose Art Museum’s Deputy Director of Operations, will be reading selections from his newly published debut collection kiss & release (Unsolicited Press, 2024). Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Diane Seuss called kiss & release “a lovable and pleasurable book about love and pleasure.” A meditation in a rush, DiPietro’s poetry muses on how we end up in the same place over and over, even while forms, language, and communication decay.

Called “fabulously self-aware and timely collection” (The Poetry Question), Chen Chen’s second book of poems, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (BOA Editions, 2022), was a finalist for the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize. It was also called a “best book of 2022” by The Boston Globe, Electric Lit, NPR, and others, and was named a 2023 Notable Book by the American Library Association. With irrepressible humor and play, Chen Chen’s anarchic poems celebrate life, despite all that would crush aliveness.

ABOUT THE POETS

Chen Chen is a writer, teacher, and editor. His debut, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, 2017), was longlisted for the 2017 National Book Award and won the Thom Gunn Award, among other honors. His work has appeared in many publications, including Poetry and three The Best American Poetry editions. He has received two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and United States Artists. He was named the 2018-2022 Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence at Brandeis University and currently teaches for the Low-Residency MFA programs at New England College, Stonecoast, and Antioch.

Anthony DiPietro is a gay sex poet and arts administrator. Originally from Providence, RI., he has lived throughout New England, California, New York, Oregon, and Tennessee. A graduate of Brown University with honors in creative writing, he also earned a creative writing MFA at Stony Brook University. Now deputy director of Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, he resides in Worcester, MA. He composed his 2021 chapbook, And Walk Through (Seven Kitchens Press), on a typewriter during the pandemic lockdowns. kiss & release (Unsolicited Press, 2024) is his debut collection. His writing and readings are featured on his website, www.anthonywriter.com.