Join us on Tuesday, March 31, at 8:00 PM ET for a virtual reading celebrating the six finalists for the 2026 New England Review Award for Emerging Writers. Featuring Michael Carson, Joel Cuthbertson, Tom DeBeauchamp, Abigail Dembo, Maja Lukic, & Paul S. Ukrainets.

Left to right: Stephen Cramer, Jason Lamb, & Meg Reynolds

Join us on Thursday, April 30, at 7 PM EST in Middlebury College’s Humanities House (115 Franklin Street) for the fourth installment of NERs Ulysses Reading Series. Named after artist James MacDonell’s Visualizing Ulysses series of schematic prints, which hang throughout the house, this series celebrates new work by writers at all stages of their careers.

Featuring poet and educator Stephen Cramer, writer and Bread Loaf coordinator Jason Lamb, NER contributor Meg Reynolds, and a talented Middlebury student writer.

Light fare and specialty mocktails inspired by Visualizing Ulysses will be served. This event free and open to the public.

Interested in attending? Help us get a head count by RSVPing here.


Stephen Cramer’s first book of poems, Shiva’s Drum, was selected for the National Poetry Series and published by University of Illinois Press. Bone Music, his sixth, won the Louise Bogan Award. His ninth, The Disintegration Loops, was a finalist for the Vermont Book Award. His most recent is City Full of Fireworks and Blues, out from Shanti Arts. He is also the editor of Turn It Up! Music in Poetry from Jazz to Hip-Hop. Cramer’s work has appeared in journals such as The American Poetry Review, African American Review, The Yale Review, and Harvard Review. He teaches writing and literature at the University of Vermont and lives with his wife and teenager in Burlington. 

Jason Lamb, coordinator of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences, taught middle school English for several years before recruiting emerging and established writers for the MFA in Writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. He writes short stories and served as a judge for the 2024 Vermont Book Awards in fiction.

Meg Reynolds is a poet, artist, and teacher from New England. An instructor in writing and humanities at Vermont Adult Learning in Burlington, her work has been published in a number of literary journals including Iterant, Prairie Schooner, New England Review, and the Kenyon Review. A graduate of the Stonecoast MFA program, her poetry and comic work has been three times nominated for the Pushcart Prize and once for Best the Net and was published in Best New Poets 2023. She is the author of A Comic Year (Finishing Line Press, 2021) and Does the Earth (Harpoon Books, 2023). Reynolds was also the 2024 winner of Inlandia Institute’s Hilary Gravendyk Prize with her collection, Condition, forthcoming April 2026. You can read more of her work via her biweekly publications on her Substack, Condition and Other Conditions.