In celebration of the finalists of the 2025 Poetry Contest with the Enoch Pratt Free Library and Little Patuxent Review,  join us for readings by finalists Greg Sevik, Marna Williams, Adriana Beltrano, and Jeremy Cox. Little Patuxent Review lead editor Sarah Berger will host.
 

Greg Sevik, co-winner of the 2025 Poetry Contest, is a poet, translator, and English professor at the Community College of Baltimore County. His poems and translations have been published in Avalon Literary Review, Ekphrastic Review, Inventory, Iron Horse, Vagabond City, and elsewhere. He earned his PhD in comparative literature from Binghamton University (SUNY) and served as a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant in Vreden, Germany. He lives in Baltimore, where he is working on his first book.

Marna Williams, co-winner of the 2025 Poetry Contest, lives in North Potomac, Maryland, and is an immunobiologist with 20 years’ experience in the biopharmaceutical industry, designing and developing novel immunotherapies for cancer and autoimmune disease. While she chose science for a profession, storytelling and poetry are in her blood, for she grew up in the Deep South where everything of significance has a story attached to it. She enjoys reading and writing poetry as a counterbalance to complement medical science. Poetry offers a sanctuary, a place to rest while the world keeps spinning.

Adriana Beltrano, a runner-up in the 2025 Poetry Contest, is a poet from Jupiter, Florida. She was named a 2024-25 Jake Adam York Prize finalist and is pursuing her MFA in poetry at Johns Hopkins University, where she is a managing editor of The Hopkins Review. Her work has been supported by the 2024 Sewanee Writers' Conference and is forthcoming in the South Carolina Review and Susurrus.

Jeremy Cox, a runner-up in the 2025 Poetry Contest, knew from a young age that he had a knack for writing. But since he wanted to earn a living at it, he majored in journalism and only minored in English (with a concentration in poetry writing) at the University of Florida. Little did he know then that it probably would have involved a lot less heartache if he had done it the other way around. He still makes his paycheck from journalism as a reporter for the Chesapeake Bay Journal, a nonprofit paper that exclusively covers environmental issues. He also teaches media writing and environmental science as an adjunct at Salisbury University. He lives with his wife and teenage daughter on the Eastern Shore, where he loves to run and ply slow-moving rivers aboard a cheap kayak.

Sarah Berger, a 2025 Poetry Contest judge, is a classical singer, writer, and artist and has been the lead editor of Little Patuxent Review since 2023. She’s a graduate of Oberlin College and the Peabody Conservatory, and she recently completed an MFA in creative writing and publishing arts at the University of Baltimore, where she has taught in the undergraduate writing program. Links to Sarah’s published writing, music, and other projects can be found at sarahbergersoprano.com and orangesloth.com.

About the Program:

• To attend in person please register here. 
• Doors will open to registered attendees at 2 pm. 
• Free parking vouchers are available to program attendees who park at the Franklin Street Garage (15 W. Franklin Street).  Ask Pratt event staff for your parking voucher prior to or after the program. 
• This free event will be presented in-person and virtually.   
• For more information about this event, email poetry@prattlibrary.org.
   

Pictured: (top row) Marna Williams, Greg Sevik, (bottom row) Jeremy Cox, Sarah Berger, Adriana Beltrano.