Tuesday, 6 p.m.: Book launch party and readings to celebrate publication day for Buffalo-based writer Laura Marris’s new collection of essays The Age of Loneliness (Graywolf Press). Joining Marris will be interdisciplinary artist and writer Summer J. Hart. Buffalo-based poet Noah Falck will emcee the readings.

About the poets and writers:
Laura Marris is a writer and translator. Her writing has appeared in The Believer, The Yale Review, The Paris Review Daily, The Common, The TLS, The New York Times, Words Without Borders and elsewhere. Her work has been supported by fellowships from MacDowell, the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and a grant from the Robert B. Silvers Foundation. The Age of Loneliness (Graywolf Press) is her first full-length collection of essays. Marris teaches creative writing at the University at Buffalo and is a teaching artist at Just Buffalo Literary Center.

Summer J. Hart is a poet, writer and interdisciplinary artist from Maine living in the Hudson Valley, New York. She is the author of Boomhouse (2023, The 3rd Thing Press), winner of the 2024 Eugene Paul Nassar Poetry Prize. Her creative work has been supported by NYSCA/NYFA and MacDowell fellowships. Her poetry can be found in Best Small Fictions 2023, Denver Quarterly, Heavy Feather Review, The Massachusetts Review, Northern New England Review, Waxwing and elsewhere. Hart is an enrolled member of the Listuguj Mi’gmaq First Nation.

Noah Falck is a poet and culture worker. He is the author of the poetry collections Exclusions (Finalist for the 2020 Believer Book Award) and Snowmen Losing Weight as well as several chapbook collections and the collaboration, Prerecorded Weather (Winner of the James Tate Poetry Prize). In 2013, he founded the Silo City Reading Series, a multimedia poetry event series inside a 120-foot high, 100-year-old abandoned grain elevator. He is the Literary Director at Just Buffalo.

About The Age of Loneliness (Graywolf Press description):

In this debut essay collection, Marris reframes environmental degradation by setting aside the conventional, catastrophic framework of the Anthropocene in favor of that of the Eremocene, “the age of loneliness” (a term coined by sociobiologist Edmund O. Wilson in his 2016 book Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life) marked by the dramatic thinning of wildlife populations and by isolation between and among species. She asks: how do we add to archives of ecological memory? How can we notice and document what’s missing in the landscapes closest to us?

Filled with equal parts alienation and wonder, each essay immerses readers in a different strange landscape of the Eremocene. Among them are the Buffalo airport with its snowy owls and the purgatories of commuter flights, layovers and long-distance relationships; a life-size model city built solely for self-driving cars; the coasts of New England and the ever-evolving relationship between humans and horseshoe crabs; and the Connecticut woods Marris revisits for the first time after her father’s death, where she participates in the annual Christmas Bird Count and encounters presence and absence in turn.

Vivid, keenly observed, and driven by a lively and lyrical voice, The Age of Loneliness is a moving examination of the dangers of loneliness, the surprising histories of ecological loss and the ways that community science — which relies on the embodied evidence of “ground truth” — can help us recognize, and maybe even recover, what we’ve learned to live without.

Fitz Books, 433 Ellicott Street ,in Buffalo. Free and open to the public. Books available for signing by the author.

Wednesday, 7 p.m.: Beyond Words: A Poetry Open Mic hosted by Skyler Jaye Rutkowski. Return of a new open mic series in Buffalo. Sign-ups start at 6:30 p.m., event starts at 7 p.m. Spotted Octopus Brewing Company, 41 Edward St., Buffalo.

Wednesday, 9 p.m.: Poetry Night at Caffe Aroma: Special Buffalo Infrigement Festival Edition of the popular biweekly open mic reading series hosted by Ben Brindise and Justin Karcher. 957 Elmwood Ave., Buffalo. Free and open to the public.

Saturday, 1 p.m.: International Open Poetry Series reading hosted by Perry Nicholas and Verniece Turner. The themes of the reading are Diversity, Poetry and “Remembering Rosemary Kothe,” the co-founder of the popular Screening Room Reading Series in the 1990s. Weather permitting, there will be a outdoor garden party at noon in the courtyard to celebrate the start of the new poetry season. Sign-up for five minute reading slots is at the door or in the classroom, where the reading will be held. Centro Culturale Italiano di Buffalo (Italian Cultural Center), 2351 Delaware Ave., Buffalo. $5 admission charge.

Saturday, 2 p.m.: Readings by poet Michael Basinski, Laura Marris (author of The Age of Loneliness published by Graywolf Press), and poet, writer and performance artist Ric Royer, author of numerous books, the most recent of which is Niagara Falls, NY (Pig Roast Publishing, 2023). The Book Corner, 1801 Main St., Niagara Falls, N.Y. Free and open to the public.