Spring Salon: “Poetry”

April 9, 2026, 7:30 pm

Ilan Mochari is the author of the novel Zinsky the Obscure and the forthcoming poetry collection Playthings, due out in March, 2026. His prose and poetry have appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Salamander, Hobart, J Journal, The Louisville Review, Juked, Valparaiso Fiction Review, FOLIO, North Dakota Review, and elsewhere. His work has been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes, as well as the Derringer Award, and he has received a Literature Artist Fellowship grant from the Somerville Arts Council.

Julia Thacker’s debut collection To Wildness (Waywiser Press, 2025) was chosen for the 19^th annual Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize by renowned poet Paul Muldoon. Her poems appear in Bennington Review, The Massachusetts Review, Poetry International and The New Republic. The granddaughter of a Harlan County coal miner, Julia was raised in Dayton, Ohio. She first came to Massachusetts as a fellow of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Additionally, she has been the recipient of fellowships from the Corporation of Yaddo, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Radcliffe Institute. Julia has taught writing at Tufts University, the Radcliffe Seminars and as poet-in-residence in public schools throughout the state. In 2024, she was an Edith Wharton Writer-in-Residence at The Mount.

Christie Towers (she/her) is a poet living in Somerville. She is the author of And Again I Heard the Stars (Spuyten Duyvil Press), a collection of poems inspired by Hildegard von Bingen. You can find her writing in various journals online and in print. She holds an MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Boston and an MDiv from Boston University. She serves as the program director for MANNA, a community for unhoused individuals and their allies.