NOPF Locals Night Opening Gala & Fundraiser

For our Locals Night Opening Gala & Fundraiser, NOPF is partnering with The Splice Poetry Series to curate a showcase of emerging and established New Orleans poets actively engaged in the community. Encompassing a broad range of subjects, poetics, and styles, these poets testify to the city’s vibrant and diverse sensibilities. Featured local poets include Nikki Ummel, Gabrielle Octavia Rucker, Ian U Lockaby, Cid Galicia, & Lauren Burgess, performing at Saturn Bar at 3067 St. Claude Ave., New Orleans, LA 70117 at 7pm on Thursday, April 18th. This event is free and open to the public. More events at https://nolapoetry.com/

Nikki Ummel is a queer artist and editor for Bear Review. Nikki has been published or has work forthcoming with Gulf Coast, The Georgia Review, Black Lawrence Press, and others. She is the 2022 recipient of the Leslie McGrath Poetry Prize and 2023 recipient of the Juxtaprose Poetry Award for her manuscript, Bloom. Nikki is the co-founder of LMNL, an arts organization focused on readings, workshops, and residencies. She has two poetry chapbooks, Hush (Belle Point Press, 2022) and Bayou Sonata (NOLA DNA, 2023), funded by the New Orleans’ Jazz and Heritage Foundation. You can find her on the web at www.nikkiummel.com

Gabrielle Octavia Rucker is a writer, editor and teaching artist from the Great Lakes currently living in the Gulf Coast. She is a 2020 Poetry Project Fellow, a 2016 Kimbilio Fiction Fellow, and the founder of the The Seminary of Ecstatic Poetics, a non-traditional learning space for the poetically minded. Her debut poetry collection, Dereliction, is currently available via The Song Cave.

Ian U Lockaby is a poet, translator, and editor of the online journal mercury firs. His poems and translations have been or will be published in journals such as Ecotone, Denver Quarterly, FENCE, Black Warrior Review, and Poetry Northwest. He’s the author of Defensible Space/if a crow—, forthcoming from Omnidawn, and A Seam of Electricity, forthcoming from Ghost Proposal. He lives in New Orleans.

Cid Galicia is a First Generation Mexican American poet who has been teaching in New Orleans for over the past decade. He graduated with his MFA summer 2023 through The University of Nebraska Omaha. He is a poetry editor for The Good Life Review, reader for The Kitchen Table Quarterly, and this year’s FIRECRACKER Poetry Manuscript Awards. He was the recipient of the Richard Duggin Fellowship—granted for demonstrated excellence in writing, runner-up for the Academy of American Poets Helen W. Kenefick Poetry Prize, nominated for the Helen Hansen Outstanding Graduate Student Award, and the Diverse Rising Graduate Scholars Award. He has recently returned back to New Orleans, from Los Angeles where interned as Assistant to The Editor Kate Gale, for The Red Hen Press. His Learning Anthology, The Miracle of Flip-Flops, has just come to print through Red Hen. His work has appeared in The Indianapolis Review, The Watershed Review, The Elevation Review, Trestle Ties, South Broadway Press, Roi Faineant Press, The Letter Review, The Peauxdunque Review, and other journals. He was excited to attend the 2023 Summer Writing Residencies of Sundress Publications & The Kenyon Review. (@formal_poet ** https://formalpoet.com/)

Lauren Burgess is a poet and essayist from New Orleans. She received her MFA from Louisiana State University, where she served as poetry editor of New Delta Review. Her poetry has appeared in Dream Pop, Bodega, Ellipsis, Epigraph and A Velvet Giant. She is a proud recipient of the Ryan Chighizola Memorial Award for poetry, as well as the Kent Grant Award for Literary Nonfiction, selected by Megan Volpert. She is also the winner of the Robert Penn Warren Award for Poetry, selected by Eléna Rivera for her book-in-progress, CAGE.