Observable Readings: Rick Barot & Benjamin Garcia

Observable Readings and COVID-19

In the interest of public health, Observable Readings will be offered as live-streamed events for the 2020-2021 season. Readings will take place online, and will be streamed live to this event page and to St. Louis Poetry Center’s Facebook page.

For more information on how to attend and view the livestream, visit our Observable page.

Rick Barot

Rick Barot was born in the Philippines and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area.  He has published three volumes of poetry: The Darker Fall (2002), Want (2008), which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and won the 2009 Grub Street Book Prize, and Chord (2015), all published by Sarabande Books.  Chord received the UNT Rilke Prize, the PEN Open Book Award, and the Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award.  It was also a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize.  His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Poetry, The New Republic, Tin House, The Kenyon Review, and The New Yorker.  He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Stanford University.  He lives in Tacoma, Washington and directs The Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA program in creative writing at Pacific Lutheran University.  He is also the poetry editor for New England Review.  His fourth book of poems, The Galleons, was published by Milkweed Editions in 2020.

Benjamin Garcia

Benjamin Garcia’s first collection, THROWN IN THE THROAT (Milkweed Editions, August 2020), was selected by Kazim Ali for the 2019 National Poetry Series. He works as a sexual health and harm reduction educator throughout the Finger Lakes region of New York. His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in: AGNI, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, Lithub, and New England Review. Find him at benjamingarciapoet.com.