Co-organized by the Evergreen Review and Singapore Unbound
Featuring Africa Wayne, Jerome Murphy, R. A. Villanueva, and Stephanie Burt
Open to All and Free with RSVP to Jee at jkoh@singaporeunbound.org
Location: Long Island City, NYC

In his pamphlet Democratic Vistas (1871), Walt Whitman scourges the hollowness at the heart of materialism and calls for a moral and spiritual renewal through the work of literature. We are again in a time of fantastic economic inequality and fascistic political takeover, and we call on poets and poetry to open again the highways and byways of democracy. 

Africa Wayne is the author of tiny pony and the editor of Dürer in the Window: Reflexions on Art, a selection of art writings by Barbara Guest. Her poems are published in Aufgabe and How2, and a new collection is forthcoming. 

Jerome Ellison Murphy is a poet and critic based in New York City. He earned his MFA from the Creative Writing Program at New York University, where he currently serves as Manager of Undergraduate Programs, while serving part-time as a Consulting Editor for Park, Fine & Brower Literary Agency. 

R. A. Villanueva is the author of two collections of poetry: A Holy Dread, winner of the Alice James Award (2026) and Reliquaria (University of Nebraska Press, 2014), winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. 

Stephanie Burt is Donald and Katherine Loker Professor of English at Harvard. Her most recent books include Taylor's Version: The Musical and Poetic Genius of Taylor Swift (Basic Books) and Super Gay Poems (Harvard UP), both from 2025; the next collection of her own poems, Read the Room, will appear from Graywolf in 2027.