Queens College Hosts Free Public Reading by New U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze December 8
—Followed by a conversation on literary translation with QC Distinguished Professor and New York State Poet Kimiko Hahn, reception, and book signing—
Flushing, NY, November 24, 2025—Arthur Sze, who was named the nation’s 25th Poet Laureate for 2025–2026 in September by the Library of Congress, will open his tenure with a free public reading, “Words Bridging Worlds: On Poetry and Translation,” at Queens College on Monday, December 8, at 7 pm. QC Distinguished Professor Kimiko Hahn—named the New York State Poet in June—will discuss literary translation with Sze after his reading in what is believed to be the first time poets with national and state distinctions will appear together at a City University of New York college. Their conversation will be followed by a reception and book signing. Sze’s reading will take place in Room 230 of the Benjamin S. Rosenthal Library (campus map). Register for the in-person event HERE; access the livestream HERE.
Sze, a Manhattan native raised in Queens and Long Island, chose to hold his inaugural laureate event in Queens because of its linguistic diversity; on the Queens College campus alone, students speak more than 90 languages. Before his evening reading at the college—which offers an MFA in Creative Writing and Literary Translation—Sze will lead a student workshop on poetry translation from 12:15 to 1:30 pm. His appearance builds on the campus’s status as a literary landmark; a portion of the grounds has been identified as the former site of the Jamaica Academy, a one-room schoolhouse where poet Walt Whitman taught in 1839.
“The opportunity to host Arthur Sze at Queens College and welcome his engagement with our students is an extraordinary convergence of ethnicity and creativity,” said Queens College President Frank H. Wu. “With our richly diverse student body and the caliber of our faculty—notably, CUNY Distinguished Professor and newly appointed New York State Poet Kimiko Hahn—we are poised for an exchange of ideas that promises to be deeply rewarding and impactful for the entire campus community.”
Sze will give his official inaugural reading as the U.S. poet laureate at the Library of Congress on Thursday, December 11, and lead two poetry translation workshops in his hometown of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in early January. His presentation at the college is a School of Arts event, sponsored by the Office of Arts and Humanities, English Department, MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation, Writers at Queens, and the Library of Congress. Download publicity images of Sze HERE and of Kimiko Hahn HERE.
“Translation practice is a vehicle to develop our own poetry; and to write poetry, with its sonnets and sestinas, its haikus and ghazals all carried over into English from other languages, is to awaken to the possibilities—and expand the resources—of our shared language,” Sze said. “Translation builds bridges and makes connections. The more we give, the more everyone has. Great poetry ignites and reignites our shared humanity, and the transient worlds of poetry in translation play a vital role in bringing us together.”
Sze was born in New York City in 1950 to Chinese immigrants. He is the author of 12 poetry collections, most recently Into the Hush (2025), as well as the prose collection The White Orchard: Selected Interviews, Essays, and Poems (2025). His other poetry collections include The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems (2021), which received a 2024 Science and Literature Award from the National Book Foundation; Sight Lines (2019), which won the National Book Award for Poetry; Compass Rose (2014), a Pulitzer Prize finalist; The Ginkgo Light (2009), selected for the PEN Southwest Book Award and the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Book Award; The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970–1998 (1998), selected for the Balcones Poetry Prize and the Asian American Literary Award; and Archipelago (1995), selected for an American Book Award. Sze has also published an expanded collection of Chinese poetry translations, The Silk Dragon II (2024).
Sze’s honors include the Library of Congress’ 2024 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, the Bollingen Prize for American Poetry from Yale University, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation, a Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, a Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers, a Lannan Literary Award and a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Howard Foundation, and five grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry. A former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets (2012–2017) and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is a professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico with his wife, the poet Carol Moldaw, where he served as the city’s first poet laureate.
The Library of Congress Literary Initiatives Office is the home of the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, a position that has existed since 1937 when Archer M. Huntington endowed the Chair Of Poetry at the library. Since then, many of the nation’s most eminent poets have served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress and, after the passage of Public Law 99-194 (Dec. 20, 1985), as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry—a position that the law states “is equivalent to that of Poet Laureate of the United States.” For more information on the Poet Laureate and the Literary Initiatives Office, click HERE.
The Library of Congress is the world’s largest library, offering access to the creative record of the United States—and extensive materials from around the world—both on site and online. It is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office.
-30-