Poetry Reading: What Times Are These?

​The poet Paul Celan wrote: ‘What times are these when even to speak is a crime for containing so much being spoken’. This quote inspires the title for the current installation What Times Are These? as well as a starting point for an evening of creative writing and reflection around language, politics, and the theme of grace. Jessica Scicchitano brings together writers Emma Copley Eisenberg and Sylvia Jones with GRAMMY award-winning conductor and chorus master Donald Nally in this latest edition of At What Cost, her theme-based reading series.

Organized in conjunction with What Times are These? on view in Alter Gallery 276 through March 16, 2025.

About the speakers:

Emma Copley Eisenberg is the author of the nationally bestselling debut novel Housemates as well as the narrative nonfiction book The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia, which was named a New York Times Notable Book and was nominated for an Edgar Award, a Lambda Literary Award, and an Anthony Award, among other honors. Her fiction, essays, and criticism have appeared in Granta, Esquire, The New Republic, Time Magazine, Lux Magazine, McSweeney's, VQR, American Short Fiction, and many other publications. Raised in New York City, she lives in Philadelphia, where she co-founded Blue Stoop, a community hub for the literary arts. Her short story collection, Fat Swim, is forthcoming from Hogarth in 2026.

Sylvia Jones' debut poetry collection, Television Fathers, was released in October 2024 from Meekling Press. She is currently an editor at Black Lawrence Press and intermittently serves as a reader for the literary journal, Ploughshares. She has received fellowships and awards from the Peaked Hill Trust; Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts; Topical Cream; Jack Straw Cultural Center; The Emerging Artist Initiative; OUTWrite DC; Poets at the End of The World Collective; Literary Cleveland; The Cleveland Museum of Art; Bucknell University, where she was a 2021-22 Stadler Fellow. Her writing has appeared in Smartish Pace, Sprung Formal, Revolute, DIAGRAM, the Hopkins Review, Poet Lore, Spilt Milk by the Poetry Society of New York, Shenandoah, and the Cortland Review. She earned her M.F.A. from American University in Washington, D.C., and lives and writes in Baltimore, MD.

Donald Nally collaborates with creative artists, leading orchestras, and art museums to make new works for choir that address social and environmental issues. He has commissioned nearly 200 works and, with The Crossing, has produced 34 recordings, with three Grammy Awards and nine nominations. Donald has served as chorus master at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Welsh National Opera, Opera Philadelphia, and the Spoleto Festival in Italy. Recent projects have taken him to Stockholm, Los Angeles, Helsinki, Haarlem, Porto, Riga, Los Angeles, and Houston, and he regularly performs at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall in New York. The 2024-2025 season includes collaborations with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Boston Symphony; performances with The Crossing at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Drake University, McCarter Theater in Princeton, and Abendmusik in Lincoln; guest artist/teacher residencies at Boston University, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and the University of Iowa. He has collaborated with artists Allora & Calzadilla and composer David Lang in Osaka, London, Córdoba, Bilbao, Edmonton, Cleveland, Frankfurt, and Houston.

Jessica Scicchitano is a writer and the creator of At What Cost, a reading series and curatorial practice that centers humor, inquiry, approachability, and remarkable art. Jessica received her MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University, and her writing can be found in publications such as Prelude, Sixth Finch, and Forecast Foundation. Launched in 2023, the series brings together writers and artists to explore a burning question or idea and provides the platform to respond as they wish. In an attempt to acknowledge the toll our creative, personal, and political avoidance takes, At What Cost is in equal part a space for introspection and a call to action, inviting participants and the audience to explore the questions at hand within the context of their own lives and experiences.