Supporting Women Writers in Miami - SWWIM

Supporting Women Writers in Miami - SWWIM
Featuring Poets, Juliana Gray and Celia Lisset Alvarez

The Betsy Hotel is home to Supporting Women Writers in Miami (SWWIM), founded by Poets Jen Karetnick and Catherine Esposito Prescott, – and hosting six to eight artist residencies in The Betsy Writers Room, with related poetry readings and ‘meet the artist’ events. This is the third event in the Fall 2021 series. 

Juliana Gray’s most recent poetry collection is Honeymoon Palsy (Measure Press 2017). She is also the author of Roleplay (Dream Horse Press 2012, winner of the Orphic Prize and the Eugene Paul Nassar Prize), and The Man Under My Skin (River City Publishing 2005), as well as the chapbook Anne Boleyn’s Sleeve (Winged City Chapbook Press 2013). Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, The Hopkins Review, 32 Poems, and other journals, and her humor writing has been featured in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. An Alabama native, she lives in western New York and is a professor of English at Alfred University. 

Celia Lisset Alvarez is a graduate of the University of Miami creative writing program. She is the author of three collections of poetry, Shapeshifting (winner of the 2005 Spire Press Poetry Award), The Stones (Finishing Line Press 2006), and Multiverses (Finishing Line Press 2021). A fourth collection, Bodies & Words, is forthcoming from Assure Press. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, her recent poetry, short stories, essays, and reviews has appeared recently in Fresh Words, Catamaran, Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality and the Arts, and in the anthologies How to Write a Form Poem (TS Poetry Press), Moving Images: Poetry Inspired by Cinema (Before Your Quiet Eyes Publishing), and How to Live on Other Planets: A Handbook for Aspiring Aliens (Upper Rubber Boot Books). She is currently the editor of the journal Prospectus: A Literary Offering, and lives and writes in Miami, Florida, with her husband, fellow poet Rafael Miguel Montes, daughters Lucy and Sara, her mother, Sonia, their dog, Maggie, and two kittens, Elsa and Aladdin.