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Observable Readings: Anna Ojascastro Guzon & Kristin Emanuel
September 28 @ 7:00 pm
The reading will be held in-person at High Low.
Saint Louis Poetry Center welcomes poets Anna Ojascastro Guzon and Kristin Emanuel for Observable Readings.
Books available for purchase from Left Bank Books.
ABOUT THE BOOKS
A MOTH COLLECTION
The poems of A Moth Collection converse with Charles Darwin, Tina Turner, Sylvia Plath, Sacagawea, Walt Whitman, Kendrick Lamar, and the author’s family members who survived World War II in the Philippines. What does it mean to survive? What does it mean to die? What makes us human? What makes us just another animal? Ojascastro Guzon explores the biological sciences, pop culture, current events, religion, her family’s generational history, and personal experiences with death, rebirth, survival, motherhood, marriage, the practice of medicine, education, and being a first generation Filipino American in attempts to answer these questions.
BIRDWATCHING IN THE 4TH DIMENSION
With percussive alacrity Birdwatching in the 4th Dimension attunes us to the precarity and blinding wonder of life in ages past and present. Joy and mourning mingle in these startling poems, mapped onto the fossil record and the humdrum calamities of the Anthropocene. In Emanuel’s poems, the beat of a heard it enough to conjure crustaceans and crocuses, megatheriea and mantises; it is enough to make them dance in the cosmic matrix of evolution, death, and rebirth.
ABOUT THE POETS
ANNA OJASCASTRO GUZON is a Filipino-American writer, mother, teacher, former physician, and co-founder of YourWords STL, a nonprofit that uses creative writing workshops to amplify the voices of St. Louis youth. She received an MD from the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine and an MFA from The New School Graduate Writing Program in New York City. One may find her writing in Bone Bouquet, The Boiler Journal, and Bellingham Review, among other publications. A Moth Collection is her debut book of poetry, released in May of 2026, by Finishing Line Press.
KRISTIN EMANUEL is a PhD candidate at Washington University studying poetry and poetics. She is the author of Birdwatching in the 4th Dimension, which was selected by judge Shann Ray as the winner of the 2025 Emma Howell Rising Poet Prize. Her poems, essays, and comics have appeared in journals such as Ecotone, Blackbird, and The Rumpus.
VENUE
The Observable Readings series is supported in part by:
