Watershed Literary Events Poetry Reading June 7

Watershed Literary Events continues its eighth year of programming with a reading by award-winning poets Evie Shockley and Hugo dos Santos. The event takes place on Sunday, June 7, at 3 pm in the South Orange Skate House in Meadowland Park. Watershed is sponsored by the Department of Recreation and Cultural Affairs and the Meadowland Park Conservancy in South Orange. All readings are free and open to the public.

Poet and scholar Evie Shockley thinks, creates, and writes with her eye on a Black feminist horizon. Her recent books of poetry, all published by Wesleyan University Press, include suddenly we (2023), a National Book Award Finalist and winner of an NAACP Image Award; semiautomatic (2017), a Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; and the new black (2011), also a winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy award. Her literary criticism includes Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry (University of Iowa Press, 2011) and numerous essays. Most recently, she is editor of the Norton Library edition of Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Among the honors for her body of work in poetry are the Academy Fellowship for Distinguished Poetic Achievement, the Shelley Memorial Award, the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, the Holmes National Poetry Prize, and the Stephen Henderson Award. Her joys include participating in poetry communities such as Cave Canem and collaborating with artists working in various media. Shockley is the Zora Neale Hurston Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers University.

 Hugo dos Santos is the author of Reduction in Force (Bauhan Publishing, 2026), winner of the May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Award, and Then, there (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019), a collection of Newark stories. Born in Lisboa, Portugal, and raised in Newark, New Jersey, dos Santos, writes toward questions of diaspora, belonging, and memory. His poetry and fiction illuminate the beauty, complexity, and struggles of the immigrant experience and urban life. His translations of poetry by José Luís Peixoto include Homecoming (Arquipélago Press, 2024) and A Child in Ruins (Writ Large Press, 2016), a staff pick by The Paris Review Daily. Dos Santos was awarded a 2026 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts as well as fellowships from The Edward F. Albee Foundation, MacDowell, and the Disquiet International Literary Program. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Barrelhouse, Cultural Daily, Electric Literature, Hobart, The Common, The Fanzine, and elsewhere. Hugo currently lives in Flemington.

Founded in 2019, Watershed Literary Events promotes the work of a talented and diverse array of writers with a New Jersey connection. For more information, contact Blake Smith at arts@southorange.org.