The fourth part of the Fifth Annual Alumni Poetry Reading Series features Baba Badji ’15, Joseph Fasano ’08, E. J. Koh ’13, and Catherine Pond ’13.
Organized by Timothy Donnelly, Writing.
Baba Badji ’15 is a Senegalese-American poet and translator whose first book of poems, Ghost Letters, was published this year by Parlor Press. A PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at Washington University, his research and teaching interests center on the links between various forms of postcolonial studies, theory, and practice, with a particular focus on debates about postcolonial translation theory and Négritude in Anglophone and Francophone cultures. He lives in St. Louis.
Joseph Fasano ’08 is the author of the novel The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing (Platypus Press, 2020), which was named one of the "20 Best Small Press Books of 2020" by Maudlin House. His books of poetry include The Crossing (2018), Vincent (2015), Inheritance (2014), and Fugue for Other Hands (2013). He teaches at Manhattanville College and Columbia University, where he is the Faculty Advisor for the undergraduate journal Quarto.
E. J. Koh ’13 is the author of the memoir The Magical Language of Others (Tin House Books, 2020) as well as of poetry collection A Lesser Love (Louisiana State University Press, 2017), winner of the Pleiades Editors Prize for Poetry. Her co-translation of Yi Won’s The World’s Lightest Motorcycle is forthcoming from Zephyr Press. She is a PhD candidate in English Language and Literature at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Catherine Pond’s ’13 first book of poems, Fieldglass, received the Crab Orchard First Book Award and was published earlier this year. Her poems have appeared in AGNI, The Adroit Journal, Best New Poets 2020, Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018, Narrative Magazine, Rattle, and other publications. A co-founder of online magazine Two Peach, Pond is currently a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Southern California. She lives in San Francisco.
