Paterson Poetry Prize Reading 2025: Martin Espada and Dante Di Stefano

A reading at Passaic County Community College on December 6, 2025. Dante Di Stefano is the author of five poetry collections and a chapbook, including, most recently, the book-length poem, The Widowing Radiance (Bordighera Press, 2025). His writing has appeared in American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry 2018, Poem-a-Day, Prairie Schooner, The Writer’s Chronicle, and elsewhere. He has won the Auburn Witness Poetry Prize, the Manchester Poetry Prize (UK), the Thayer Fellowship in the Arts, and many more awards. He co-edited the anthology Misrepresented People (NYQ Books, 2018). He teaches high school English in Endicott, NY, and lives in Endwell, New York, with his wife, Christina, their daughter, Luciana, their son, Dante Jr., and their goldendoodle, Sunny.From the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, New Jersey. Martín Espada’s new book of poems from Knopf is called Jailbreak of Sparrows. His previous book of poems, Floaters, won the National Book Award. He has received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, a Letras Boricuas Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He teaches at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. The featured readers are followed by an open reading.