America, a Love Story
The poet will be joined by Jennifer Grotz, Director of the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference
New poems on love, family, and art from the author of Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden
Join us for an evening with Rochester Reads 2025 guest, Camille Dungy, as she celebrates the release of her fifth collection of poems, America, A Love Story and talks with University of Rochester professor and fellow poet Jennifer Grotz.
“Earthly and visionary.” –Yusef Komunyakaa
America, A Love Story is Camille T. Dungy’s powerful testament to living and loving as a Black woman and mother in today’s America, and her first book of poetry in almost a decade. Piercingly honest and deeply compassionate, this poetry moves through the mounting griefs of contemporary American life with unwavering clarity. The book is part indictment, part celebration—full of gratitude, fear, resistance, and hope. Dungy explores intimacy, parenting, racism, history, and the natural world with clarity and depth. Some poems reflect on the past; others respond to the work of contemporary Black artists. Many are formally playful, including a series of 700-character poems inspired by the 700 hours of sleep a mother loses in her child’s first year. Gorgeous, bright, and bold, these poems speak from the edges—between mother and child, body and earth, self and country. They hold tension and tenderness in equal measure, creating a space for love amidst uncertainty.
Jennifer Grotz is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Still Falling (Graywolf Press, 2023). Also a translator from the French and Polish, her newest translation is Everything I Don’t Know, the selected poems of Jerzy Ficowski, co-translated from the Polish with Piotr Sommer (World Poetry, 2021). Her poems, reviews, and translations have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Nation, The New Republic, New York Review of Books, Ploughshares, New England Review, and in five volumes of the Best American Poetry anthology. The recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, Grotz has also received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. Director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences, she teaches at the University of Rochester.
Buy your books at Ampersand and join the conversation!
[table id=128 /]
[table id=129 /]
This is a virtual, live streamed event.
Choose the ticket price that’s right for you: Free, $5, $10, $15 or $20
