We’re thrilled to host two incredible poets, Brenda Hillman and Norma Cole, at NBLA on Friday, May 23rd at 7pm (time to be confirmed).

Brenda Hillman’s latest collection from Wesleyan University Press is In a Few Minutes Before Later, published in 2022. Her first collection of prose, Three Talks (2024) is available from University of Virginia Press.A recent recipient of the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Fred Cody Award for Lifetime Achievement, Hillman has edited and co-translated many books by others, including At Your Feet by Brazilian poet Ana Cristina Cesar. A former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Hillman lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she is Professor Emerita at Saint Mary’s College of California and directs the Poetry Week at Community of Writers.

Norma Cole is a poet, painter and translator. Her most recent book of poetry, FATE NEWS, appeared in October 2018. Other books of poetry include Win These Posters and Other Unrelated Prizes Inside, Where Shadows Will: Selected Poems 1988—2008, Spinoza in Her Youth and, Actualities, her collaboration with painter Marina Adams. TO BE AT MUSIC: Essays & Talks appeared in 2010. Her awards include the Fund for Poetry, Gertrude Stein Award, the Richardson Award for Non-Fiction Prose and the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation Award for Poetry. Cole has taught at San Francisco State University, University of San Francisco, UC Berkeley, Naropa University, Otis College of Art and Design and others.

* FREE and open to the public
* Light refreshments and fantastic poetry served in equal measure
* Handset letterpress broadsides of work by the poets will be printed for the occasion and available with a donation to NBLA