Wednesday May 6, 2026 – 7pm – LIVE at Fergie’s Pub

Featuring: Dilruba (Ruba) Ahmed, Barbara Siegel Carlson, Raina J. León, ariel rosé

Dilruba (Ruba) Ahmed is the author of Bring Now the Angels (Pitt Poetry), with poems featured in New York Times Magazine, The Slowdown, and Poetry Unbound. Her poems have appeared in Kenyon Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, and Virginia Quarterly Review.  Her work has also been anthologized in Best American Poetry; Halal If You Hear Me; New Moons: Contemporary Writing by North American Muslims; They Rise Like A Wave: An Anthology of Asian American Women Poets; and elsewhere.

Barbara Siegel Carlson is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Current published by Lily Poetry Review Books, 2026. Her poetry and translations have appeared in Verse Daily, Cortland Review, Mid-American Review, Salamander, 2River, The Poetry Porch and others. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Carlson is a Poetry in Translation Editor of Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices.

Raina J. León, PhD, 2026-2027 Philadelphia Poet Laureate, is a Black, Afro-Boricua poet, writer, and educator from southwest Philadelphia (Lenni Lenape ancestral lands). Her work is grounded in collective action and community engagement, centering storytelling, memory, and the liberatory practice of humanizing education across poetry, visual art, and archival practice. She is the author of black god mother this body, Canticle of Idols, Boogeyman Dawn, sombra : (dis)locate, and several chapbooks, and is the founding editor of The Acentos Review, an international journal dedicated to the promotion and publication of Latinx arts.

ariel rosé is a trans gender / androgynous / queer poet, essayist, and illustrator originally from Poland, resident of Norway, a nomad. Ariel is coming to the United States to read from Both Sides Face East. Durable Words,  that they edited: well as their latest poetry collection, morze nocą jest mięśniem serca (the sea at night is a muscle of the heart) nominated for the Orfeusz Award, and Północ. They were for the Most Beautiful Book Award for their illustrations for Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz’s Kocia Książka (Cat Book).