NJ poets present their works in women-focused lecture series

Hoboken Museum

The Hoboken Historical Museum continues its #NJWomenMakeHistory series with its seventh installment, featuring six contemporary poets reading their work.

The Hoboken Historical Museum continues its #NJWomenMakeHistory series with its seventh installment on Sunday, Dec. 6, at 4 p.m., online only, featuring six contemporary poets reading their work. The eight-part lecture series focuses on New Jersey women who made their mark on history and celebrates of the centennial of women’s right to vote.

The series has already covered Hoboken natives such as photographer Dorothea Lange and the gender barrier-breaking baseball player Maria Pepe. The series sheds light on women who made history in politics, finance, philanthropy, art, poetry and sports.

Guest speakers include authors and scholars, as well as the live participation of New Jersey women poets. This week’s installment will feature the works of six notable NJ poets. The line-up includes Tina Kelley, Talena Lachelle Queen, Joan Cusack Handler, Roxanne Hoffman, Paula Neves.

Tina Kelley’s book “Rise Wildly” was published in October and she also co-authored “Almost Home: Helping Kids Move from Homelessness to Hope,” and shared in a staff Pulitzer covering 9/11 at The New York Times. She hails from Maplewood.

Talena Lachelle Queen is the founder and president of Her Best Self, a nonprofit organization that fosters leadership qualities in young women. A Paterson native, she specializes in poetry infused with music and her writing addresses social justice issues that impact the Black community. Queen is also a martial artist, art lover, and gardener.

Joan Cusack Handler is a poet and memoirist who splits her time between Fort Lee and East Hampton, NY. She is also a psychologist in clinical practice. Her poems have received awards from The Boston Review and five Pushcart nominations and has three published books. Her fourth and most recent book, Orphans, is a verse memoir recounting the stories of her Irish immigrant parents and her relationship with them.

Roxanne Hoffman runs the literary press Poets Wear Prada with Jack Cooper. Her poem. “In Loving Memory,” which was illustrated by Edward Odwitt, was released as a chapbook in 2011. Their second collaboration, “The Little Entomologist,” was published in 2018.

Dr. Grisel Y. Acosta is an associate professor in the English Department of the City University of New York’s Bronx Community College. She is the editor of Latina Outsiders Remaking Latina Identity and is currently working on First Spanish, which tells the story of Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood in the 1980s and 90s.

Paula Neves, a Newark native, is a Luso-American writer, multi-media artist, and recipient of the 2020 NJ Poets Prize from the Journal of NJ Poets. She is the author of the poetry chapbook “Capricornucopia: The Dream of the Goats” and the co-author of the poetry/photography risograph book Shirts & Skins with photographer Nick Kline. Her work focuses on themes of work, family, identity, (dis)placement, eco-justice, spirituality, and aims to honor immigrants that sacrificed so much to build this nation.

You can reserve a spot for the lecture at https://bit.ly/NJWomenMakeHistory. The talks are free to attend.

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