Rules of IAWA: Read Each Other, Write or Be Written, Buy Our Books! And review each other!
@ John D. Calandra Italian American Institute
25 W. 43rd St., 17th Floor, NYC
Joel Allegretti & Cyn Grace Sylvie
2nd Thursday, April 9, 2026
LIVE 6-8PM EST; Open Mic begins at 6PM; admission is free
Joel Allegretti is the author of, most recently, Let’s All Be Happy Today (The Opiate Books, 2025), a collection of short stories. In addition, he has published six books and chapbooks of poetry and Our Dolphin (Thrice Publishing, 2016), a novella. He is the editor of Rabbit Ears: TV Poems (NYQ Books, 2015). Rain Taxi said, “With its diversity of content and poetic form, Rabbit Ears feels more rich and eclectic than any other poetry anthology on the market.” Allegretti has published his poems in The New York Quarterly, Barrow Street, Gargoyle, Smartish Pace, PANK, and many other journals. His short stories have appeared in The MacGuffin, The Adroit Journal, and Pennsylvania Literary Journal, among others.
Cyn Grace Sylvie (she/they) is a queer neurodivergent writer, multimedia artist, and spiritual educator, and the founder of TAROT CHURCH, a tarot education movement that aims to de-stigmatize tarot across faith systems. Their first chapbook, What Sharp Teeth was published by Crying Heart Press in October of 2025. Sylvie is a recipient of Epiphany Magazine’s 2017 Short Nonfiction Prize, and was long-listed as a Notable Nonfiction Selection in The Best American Essays of 2018 (Mariner Books). Their writing has appeared in Dewdrop, Open Secrets Magazine, and The Rumpus. They are first generation Italian-American diaspora, and reside in Jersey City, NJ.
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April 18: BOSTON Michael Franco & Jane Ward
May 14: NEW YORK Maria Giura & Denise Laneve
May 16: BOSTON Jennifer Militello & George Guida