Join us for 3rd Friday on September 18 at 6 PM, for a fun, FREE special literary program, celebrating the book launch of Penn State Professor Shara McCallum’s latest collection of poetry, BEHOLD. McCallum will be in conversation with author/poet and editor Carey Salerno, Executive Director and Publisher of Alice James Books.

This event is part of our America’s 250th Literary Celebrations series.

Born of the poet’s longstanding love of painting, BEHOLD is a bold new collection about what it means to be seen in art—and in the larger world.

BEHOLD meditates on colonization, race, and the body’s place in the world, reflecting Shara McCallum’s intentions to closely observe works of art outside the tradition of the “masters”—terminology that is especially fraught when considering work by Caribbean, Black, and women artists. By eschewing observation to engage with questions of how we interact with art, and what art reflects back to the individual viewer, BEHOLD represents a subjective response to art and identity from one of contemporary poetry’s most celebrated voices.

About the Author:

From Jamaica and born to a Jamaican father and Venezuelan mother, Shara McCallum is the author of seven books of poetry, published in the US & UK, including Behold, forthcoming in 2026. Awards for her work include a Guggenheim Fellowship, Musgrave Medal, NEA Fellowship, Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for No Ruined Stone, OCM Bocas Caribbean Poetry Prize for Madwoman, Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize for The Water Between Us, among others. McCallum teaches at Penn State University and from 2021-22 served as the Penn State Laureate. 

About the Interviewer:

Carey Salerno serves as the executive director & publisher of Alice James Books where she has been dedicated to broadening the spectrum of the American poetic voice since 2008. She is the author of The Hungriest Stars (2025), Tributary (2021), Shelter (2009), and a co-editor of Lit From Inside: 40 Years of Poetry from Alice James Books (2013). She is the recipient of a 2025 Pushcart Prize and a 2025 Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Jersey State Arts Council. Salerno serves as co-chair for LitNet: The Literary Network and teaches publishing arts and poetry writing for the University of Maine.

She is a frequent guest of writing programs, conferences, and festivals where she conducts editorial consultations and delivers talks on publishing arts, editing, poetry, manuscript compilation, and other topics. You may find her essays, poems–and articles and interviews regarding her literary and publishing work–in print and online, including in NPR, Poets & Writers, and American Poetry Review.