James Allen Hall MFA '00 and Eugenia Leigh

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | Poetry at Bennington welcomes James Allen Hall MFA '00 and Eugenia Leigh, who will read from their poetry collections.

James Allen Hall MFA '00 is the author of the poetry collections Romantic Comedy (Four Way, 2023) and Now You're the Enemy (Arkansas, 2008) and a book of lyric personal essays, I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well (Cleveland State, 2016). The recipient of awards from the Lambda Literary Foundation, the Texas Institute of Letters, the Fellowship of Southern Writers, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the National Endowment of the Arts, they direct the Rose O'Neill Literary House at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, edit the literary journal Cherry Tree, and co-host Breaking Form: A Podcast of Poetry and Culture.

Eugenia Leigh is a Korean American poet. Her two collections are Bianca (Four Way, 2023) and Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows (Four Way, 2014), winner of the Late Night Library's 2015 Debut-litzer Prize in Poetry.  Her poems and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, Bennington Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Nation, Ploughshares, Poetry, the Best New Poets anthology, and the Best of the Net anthology. She was awarded Poetry magazine's 2021 Bess Hokin Prize and serves as a Poetry Editor at The Adroit Journal and as the Valentines Editor at Honey Literary, a BIPOC-focused literary journal and literary arts organization.