Poets Reuben Jackson and Jonathan Katz will be reading together at Annapolis’ Evelyn’s (a bistro focused on local organic foods and sustainability) as part of the Evil Grin Reading Series. 

Reuben has told me personally that he will be “scattering some clouds around” so this is not to be missed. Apropos of that, Reuben’s new poetry collection is Scattered Clouds due out from ASP this fall season.

Reuben Jackson served as curator of the Smithsonian’s Duke Ellington Collection in Washington, D.C. for over twenty years. His music reviews have been published in the Washington Post, Washington City Paper, Jazz Times, and on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Jackson is also an educator and mentor with The Young Writers Project. He taught poetry for 11 years at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland and taught high school for two years in Burlington, Vermont. His poems have been published in over 40 anthologies; his first volume is fingering the keys, which Joseph Brodsky picked for the Columbia Book Award. Reuben Jackson is currently an archivist with the University of the District of Columbia’s Felix E. Grant Jazz Archives. From 2013 until 2018, he was host of Friday Night Jazz on Vermont Public Radio.

Jonathan Katz, Ph.D., has directed the state arts agency in Kansas, the children’s museum in Denver, and the graduate arts management program at the U. of IL.-Springfield. As CEO of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA), he guided an association whose members invest over $400 million of public funds annually in artistic and cultural activities, he co-founded the nation’s Arts Education Partnership, and he helped create Poetry Out Loud. He consults extensively on strategic planning and leadership development, serves on the board of American Poetry Review, and lives in beautiful Takoma Park, MD, with his muse, Terri Moreland. Preorder Katz’s new full length book of poetry Objects In Motion. Order Katz’s chapbook, Love Undefined, out now.