The Care Center is excited to welcome the following poets & authors in 2026!
(All events are free and open to the community; to RSVP or learn more, please email srauch@carecenterholyoke.org)
Keetje Kuipers
October 7, 2026; 10:15am
Reading / Q&A – Location TBD
Keetje Kuipers (pronounced Kay-tcha Ky-pers) is the author of four books of poems: Lonely Women Make Good Lovers, Beautiful in the Mouth, The Keys to the Jail, and All Its Charms. Keetje’s poems, essays, and short stories have appeared in over a hundred journals and magazines, including the New York Times Magazine, Poetry Magazine, The Yale Review, American Poetry Review, Orion, Kenyon Review, and The Believer. Her poems have also been featured as part of the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, and read on NPR’s Writer’s Almanac.
Yalie Saweda Kamara
April 6, 2026; 1pm
Reading / Q&A – Clemente Room
Yalie Kamara’s debut full-length poetry collection, Besaydoo, was published by Milkweed Editions in 2024. Noted in the New York Times Review of Books, Besaydoo is the winner of the 2025 Ohio Book Awards in the category of poetry and was a finalist for the 2025 Maya Angelou Book Award and the 2025 Firecracker Awards. She is also the editor of the anthology What You Need to Know About Me: Young Writers on Their Experience of Immigration and the author of A Brief Biography of My Name and When The Living Sing.
Rebecca Olander
March 25, 2026; 1pm
Reading / Q&A – Clemente Room
Rebecca is a poet, teacher, and editor based in Western Massachusetts.She is the editor/director of Perugia Press. Her newest book is Singing from the Deep End.
Jenny Browne
February 25, 2026; 10:15am
Reading / Q&A – HiSET Classroom
Jenny Browne is the author of three collections of poems: Dear Stranger, The Second Reason, and At Once, all from the University of Tampa Press. Her poems and essays have appeared widely, including American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, The New York Times, Tin House, and Threepenny Review. A former James Michener Fellow at the University of Texas in Austin, she has received grants from the San Antonio Artist Foundation, the Texas Writers League, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She was the 2016-2018 City of San Antonio Poet Laureate and the 2017 State of Texas Poet Laureate. In 2020, she was the Distinguished Fulbright Scholar in Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queens University in Belfast, and returned in 2024 for another Fulbright in Creative Writing.
Mydalis Vera
January 14, 2026; 12pm
Poetry Class Guest Teacher
Mydalis Vera is a Puerto Rican writer who loves getting creative with words. She holds an MFA in Nonfiction Creative Writing from Bay Path University, and is the author of Warrior Guerrera: Sayings and Affirmations para las Guerreras, a poetry chapbook titled Warrior Guerreras and Broken Hearts, Burning Suns, and the Guerrera Writer Journal.
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