Poet Christian J. Collier will be doing an in-person launch for his new chapbook, The Gleaming of the Blade, on Thursday, June 16th at the Hunter Museum of American Art.
The collection was named the 2021 Frost Place Competition Editors' Selection and was published in February by Bull City Press. Poet and UTC professor Andrew Najberg will also be reading. His latest collection, The Goats Have Taken Over the Barracks, was released last year by Finishing Line Press.
Christian J. Collier is a Black, Southern writer, arts organizer, and teaching artist who resides in Chattanooga, TN. He is the author of the chapbook The Gleaming of the Blade from Bull City Press. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in December, North American Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, The Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. A 2015 Loft Spoken Word Immersion Fellow, he is also the winner of the 2022 Porch Prize in Poetry and the 2020 ProForma Contest from Grist Journal.
Andrew Najberg is the author of the collection of poems The Goats Have Taken Over the Barracks (Finishing Line Press, 2021) and the chapbook of poems Easy to Lose (Finishing Line Press, 2008). His individual poems and prose have appeared in North American Review, Louisville Review, Cimarron Review and various other journals and anthologies. He was a recipient of an AWP Intro award in poetry and currently teaches creative writing and other courses for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
The reading is free and gets underway at 6 PM on the terrace at the Hunter Museum and will be followed by a brief q and a and signing. Both poets will have books for sale.