Fall Literary Festival Featured Presenter Ross Gay reads from his highly acclaimed essay and poetry collections. The Reverie Movement Collective will perform interpretive dance to two of Ross's poems. This event is free and open to the public, with many thanks to our host St. John's Episcopal Church, and our sponsors the Centofanti Foundation, the Youngstown State University Center for Working-Class Studies, WYSU-FM, the Community Foundation of the Mahoning Valley and the Youngstown Foundation. The reading will take place at St John's Episcopal Church (323 Wick Avenue Youngstown, OH) at 7:00pm followed by a book signing.
Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding, winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. His first collection of essays, The Book of Delights, was released in 2019 and was a New York Times bestseller. His new collection of essays, Inciting Joy, was released by Algonquin in October of 2022 and won the Ohioana Library Award.