with Headliners Marilyn Nelson and Abigail Chabitnoy
HYBRID PROGRAM — In-person at the Emily Dickinson Museum and streaming live for online registrants
This program is FREE to attend. Registration is required.
Part of the 2023 Tell It Slant Poetry Festival!
Join us for the 11th annual Tell it Slant Poetry Festival, a week of events happening both online and in-person at the Museum! Register here to access the Festival schedule. Your registration for an October 1 ticket, gains you access to the whole Festival:
REGISTER FOR THE FESTIVAL (October 1 ticket is for whole Festival)
Join us in Emily Dickinson’s garden or virtually for a celebration of creativity and poetry! Our headlining poets, Marilyn Nelson and Abigail Chabitnoy, read from their work and discuss their poetic practice and inspiration with Terry Blackhawk. Stay for music by Daphne Parker Powell, refreshments, and book signing under our heated Festival tent.
About the Poets
Marilyn Nelson is the author or translator of some twenty poetry books and chapbooks for adults, young adults, and children. Many of her collections have won awards, and her poems have been widely anthologized. Nelson’s honors include two NEA creative writing fellowships, the 1990 Connecticut Arts Award, a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship (in the South of France!), a fellowship from the J.S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Ruth Lilly Award, the Robert Frost Medal, and the Wallace Stevens Award. She has served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, as Poet-in-Residence of the Poets Corner at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and as the Poet Laureate of the State of Connecticut. The mother of two and grandmother of two, she lives quietly, retired from a long career in academia, with her daughter and three cats.
Marilyn Nelson will be honored at the Tell It Slant Awards Night.
Abigail Chabitnoy is the author of In the Current Where Drowning Is Beautiful (Wesleyan 2022), How to Dress a Fish (Wesleyan 2019), winner of the 2020 Colorado Book Award for Poetry and shortlisted in the international category of the 2020 Griffin Prize for Poetry, and the lino-cut illustrated chapbook Converging Lines of Light (Flower Press 2020). Abigail is a mentor for the Institute of American Indian Arts MFA in Creative Writing and an assistant professor at UMass Amherst. She is a Koniag descendant and member of the Tangirnaq Native Village in Kodiak.
Anna Baryshnikov is an actor and writer who lives in New York City. Select TV roles: Lavinia Dickinson on “Dickinson” (Apple), “Superior Donuts” (CBS), “Prodigal Son” (FOX), “Good Girls Revolt” (Amazon), and “Doll & Em” (HBO). Theater: Sam Hunter’s A Bright New Boise (Signature Theatre), Time and The Conways (Broadway/Roundabout Theater Company) Film: Kenneth Lonergan’s “Manchester by the Sea,” “The Kindergarten Teacher,” “Josie & Jack,” and the upcoming A24 film “Love Lies Bleeding” where she’ll appear opposite Kristen Stewart. Training: Northwestern University.
Adrian Blake Enscoe (He/They) is an actor and musician from Brooklyn, NY. Originally growing up in the woody outlands of Upstate New York, he earned a BFA in Theater at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh before landing in NYC, meeting his now-wife Sydney Shepherd on a subway, and founding the folk band Bandits on the Run with Shepherd and their close friend Regina Strayhorn. In between writing and touring with the Bandits — whose past few years have included recording their EP Now Is The Time with grammy-winning producer Ryan Hadlock, writing and recording songs for the Netflix series StoryBots, and playing a string of dates at the Singapore F1 Grand Prix — Adrian has been a long time musical collaborator of actor/writer/musician Christopher Sears and developed the role of The Fool in Sears’ Moonchildren Opera. Adrian is also a stage and film actor; in addition to starring as Austin Dickinson opposite Hailee Steinfeld in the Apple TV+ breakout series Dickinson, he originated the role of Little Brother in the world premier of Swept Away (based on the music of the Avett Brothers) and will be reprising the role this coming December at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. Most recently, Adrian has been developing a musical adaptation of the book What’s Eating Gilbert Grape with writer/director Peter Hedges (Pieces of April) and longtime collaborators Sears, Shepherd, and Strayhorn.
Jennifer Moeller is a Tony Award nominated costume designer for theater, opera and TV. Recent credits include Dickinson for AppleTV+, the revival of Lerner & Loewe’s Camelot at Lincoln Center Theater, and Brandon Jacob Jenkin’s new play Comeuppance at Signature Theater. Jennifer is a frequent collaborator of Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Lynn Nottage and designed the Broadway productions of Sweat and Clyde’s for which she received a Drama Desk Award. Jennifer is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama.
Join us for an inspiring evening at the Tell It Slant Awards honoring individuals whose work is imbued with the creative spirit of Emily Dickinson. 
The Emily Dickinson Museum’s annual Tell It Slant Poetry Festival is an event with international reach that celebrates Emily Dickinson’s poetic legacy and the contemporary creativity she and her work continues to inspire from the place she called home.
The Emily Dickinson International Society (EDIS) is returning to Amherst! For the last three summers, while EDIS has gathered online and in Seville, the Emily Dickinson Museum was closed. The Museum used the time to undertake a major, impeccably researched and executed restoration of the Dickinson Homestead; they also launched the first comprehensive cataloging of the Museum’s collection of over 10,000 objects. The EDIS Annual Meeting will feature this work. Participants will be able to tour the magnificently restored Homestead, learn about the restoration from museum staff, and view objects relating to Dickinson’s home from the Museum’s collection that have never been exhibited. 
Seeking proposals for the following IN-PERSON AND VIRTUAL program slots to be scheduled September 25 – October 1