Toledo-based poets Joey Kim, Ayendy Bonifacio visit the Public Library Aug. 9 for Ohio Writers Series

MOUNT VERNON – The Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County has a special treat lined up for patrons on Tuesday, Aug. 9 when it welcomes Toledo, Ohio-based poets Joey Kim and Ayendy Bonifacio. 

This event is part of the ongoing Ohio Writers Series at the Main Library, and like other events it includes readings by the authors, delicious mocktails and an audience Q&A. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. at the Library’s Outdoor Annex, 201 N. Mulberry St. in Mount Vernon (rain site: Urton Clockhouse in Ariel Foundation Park).

The library is offering a limited number of free copies of "Body Facts" by Joey Kim and "To the River We are Migrants" by Ayendy Bonifacio beginning Monday, Aug. 1 at the Main Library, and continuing while supplies last. This program is part of the Humanities Grants for Libraries, an initiative of the American Library Association (ALA) made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) through the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.

Joey S. Kim, author of "Body Facts," is a scholar, creative writer and Assistant Professor of English at the University of Toledo. Her poetry ventures through Korean history, the feminine body, U.S. foreign policy and coming-of-age in midwestern America. She researches nineteenth-century global Anglophone literature and poetics. Her work has been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Pleiades: Literature in Context, Burningword Literary Journal, Essays in Romanticism, and elsewhere. She is a 2020 Pushcart Prize nominee for her poem "Plunder," which first appeared in Pleiades.

"To the River, We Are Migrants" is Ayendy Bonifacio’s second book, and library patrons may recognize his name from previous workshops with the Library’s Teen Writing Program. Bonifacio was born in Santiago De Los Caballeros, Dominican Republic, and raised in East New York, Brooklyn. He earned his Ph.D. from the Ohio State University and is an assistant professor of English at the University of Toledo. He writes and teaches about American Literature and culture and LatinX studies. His work has appeared in many academic journals, as well as The New York Times and The Los Angeles Review of Books. He is also the author of a memoir, "Dique Dominican."