What The Universe Is: Leila Farjami and Joan Kwon Glass

One of the guiding principles for me as I program What The Universe Is: A (Virtual) Reading Series is paring people based on thematic affinities — I find this ends up generating a richer and more interesting conversation between poems and poets than more reductive approaches. It allows each of the poets to show up as themselves and to share whatever is central to their work and their interests without adding in any expectation of performance or the need to enact only certain elements of themselves. It also reflects my belief that poetry is a way of connecting with each other across — and through — our individual experiences.

Sometimes the thematic connections are subtle. In the case of October’s pairing, the thematic element is clear from the jump: Leila Farjami and Joan Kwon Glass are diasporic daughters of different nations. They are poets whose work considers the deeply human experience of life in inextricable conversation with two cultures. They are both the gap and the bridge, in the way that only poets can be.

Leila Farjami is an Iranian-American poet, translator, and psychotherapist. She is the author of Daughter of Salt (Trio House Press, July 2026), an Editor’s Selection. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, The Iowa Review Award in Poetry, The Cincinnati Review’s Schiff Award, and a PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship. Her poems are published or forthcoming in Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, AGNI, The Missouri Review, Copper Nickel, and Pleiades, among others. She lives in Los Angeles. Her work can be found at leilafarjami.com and on Instagram @leila_poetry.

Joan Kwon Glass is a diasporic, mixed-race, Korean American poet, author of the poetry collection DAUGHTER OF THREE GONE KINGDOMS which won the Paterson Poetry Prize & the Eric Hoffer Book Award for Poetry & was a finalist for the Balcones Poetry Prize. Her book, NIGHT SWIM, won the Diode Book Prize. Joan’s poems are forthcoming in Shenandoah & The Offing & have been featured on NPR, Poetry Daily, Best American Poetry & The Slowdown & in Poetry, Passages North, Poetry Northwest, Korea Quarterly, Split Lip, Prairie Schooner & elsewhere. She has been a featured reader at festivals such as Mass Poetry, the Boston Book Festival, the Sarah Lawrence College Poetry Festival & the Brooklyn Poets Poetry Festival & has been awarded residencies at Vermont Studio Center, SWWIM & Prospect Street Writers House. Subscribe to her Substack They Say Poetry is Dead! & check out her upcoming workshops at www.joankwonglass.com

Be sure to register at bit.ly/WTUIOct2026 — don’t miss this reading!