Please join us on Thursday, April 9 for the next installment of THE IAWA LITERARY READING SERIES at The Calndra Institute, featuring New Jersey poets Joel Allegretti and Cyn Grace Sylvie.

Cyn Grace Sylvie (she/they) is a queer neurodivergent writer, multimedia artist, and spiritual educator, and the founder of TAROT CHURCH, a tarot education movement that aims to destigmatize tarot across faith systems. Cyn is a recipient of Epiphany Magazine’s 2017 Short Nonfiction Prize, and long-listed as a Notable Nonfiction Selection in ‘The Best American Essays of 2018’ (Mariner Books). Their writing has appeared in Dewdrop, Open Secrets Magazine, and The Rumpus. Their first chapbook, “What Sharp Teeth” was published by Crying Heart Press in October of 2025. They are first generation Italian-American diaspora, and reside in Jersey City, NJ.

Joel Allegretti is the author of, most recently, Platypus (NYQ Books, 2017), a collection of poems, prose, and performance texts, and Our Dolphin (Thrice Publishing, 2016), a novella. He is the editor of Rabbit Ears: TV Poems (NYQ Books, 2015). The Boston Globe called Rabbit Ears “cleverly edited” and “a smart exploration of the many, many meanings of TV.” Rain Taxi said, “With its diversity of content and poetic form, Rabbit Ears feels more rich and eclectic than any other poetry anthology on the market.” Allegretti has published his poems in The New York Quarterly, Barrow Street, Smartish Pace, PANK, and many other national journals, as well as in journals published in Canada, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and India.

The evening will conclude with an open mic: bring your best work to share, or an ear to listen. 

Calandra Institute
25 West 43rd Street
Suite #1700
New York, NY 10036