Philip Schultz. Photo: Basso Cannarsa; The poet and writer Jill Bialosky. Photo: Beowulf Sheehan;
What role can poetry play in shaping how we understand, question, and participate in civic life?
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Philip Schultz and acclaimed poet, novelist, and editor Jill Bialosky join David Rattray, editor-in-chief of The East Hampton Star, for an afternoon of readings and conversation exploring poetry as both a reflection of its time and an active form of civil discourse. Through their newly published collections, Schultz and Bialosky consider how poets respond to the social and political forces around them—and how writing can become an expression of conscience, resistance, empathy, and collective understanding.
The afternoon weaves live readings by Schultz and Bialosky with historic recordings of some of America’s most influential poetic voices—including Walt Whitman, Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg, and others—placing contemporary work in dialogue with generations of poets who have challenged, chronicled, and helped shape the American conversation.
Copies of Bialosky’s new collection, Mock Heart, and Schultz’s new collection, Enormous Morning will be available for purchase.
Jill Bialosky
Jill Bialosky is the author of five acclaimed collections of poetry, including Asylum, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award; three critically acclaimed novels, including, The Prize; a New York Times best-selling memoir, History of a Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished Life; and Poetry Will Save Your Life: A Memoir. Her work has been a finalist for the James Laughlin Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, and the Books for a Better Life Award. In 2014, she was honored by the Poetry Society of America for her distinguished contribution to poetry. She is an executive editor at W. W. Norton & Company and lives in New York City.
Photo: Beowulf Sheehan
Philip Schultz
Philip Schultzwon the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Failure in 2008. He is the founder and director of The Writers Studio, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary next year. His most recent collection, Enormous Morning (W.W. Norton 2026) was preceded by Luxury (Norton 2022) and The Wherewithal, a novel in verse (W.W. Norton 2014). He is also the author of two memoirs, My Dyslexia (W.W. Norton 2011) and Comforts of the Abyss: The Art of Persona Writing (W.W. Norton 2022). His six other poetry collections are The God of Loneliness (Harcourt 2010), Living in the Past (Harcourt 2004), The Holy Worm of Praise (Harcourt 2002), the chapbook My Guardian Angel Stein (1986), Deep Within the Ravine (Viking 1984, recipient of The Academy of American Poets’ Lamont Prize) and Like Wings (Viking 1978, winner of an American Academy & Institute of Arts and Letters Award as well as a National Book Award nomination). He the recipient of a 2005 Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry and received poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts, a Fulbright scholarship, as well as the Levinson Prize from Poetry magazine.
Photo: Basso Cannarsa
David Rattray
David Rattray is the owner and editor of The East Hampton Star. He is the fifth member of the Rattray family over three generations to have held the post. He was born at Southampton Hospital on June 17, 1963, the son of Everett Rattray and Helen Seldon Rattray. He attended the Hampton Day School in Bridgehampton, N.Y. in his early years and graduated from East Hampton High School and then Dartmouth College. Among his first jobs was as a teenage busboy at the Sea Wolf restaurant in East Hampton and included two summers as an East Hampton Town lifeguard, an assistant caretaker on Gardiner's Island, selling fish, setting up party tents, making table and glassware deliveries for Bermuda Party Rentals, staffing the liquor checkout counter at a Cambridge, Mass., grocery store, as a field archaeologist for the American Museum of Natural History. He was associate producer on the public television documentaries "The Hurricane of '38" and "Chicago 1968" for the American Experience and "Tabloid Truth" for Frontline. He worked for Design Division, a museum design firm in Manhattan, before returning to East Hampton in 1998 to work at The Star. He became its editor in 2003, succeeding his mother, Helen S. Rattray.
Photo: East Hampton Star
Sponsors
Performing Arts programs are supported by 2026 season sponsors Galia Meiri-Stawski and Axel Stawski, with additional lead support from Henry and Peggy Schleiff, The Melville Straus Family Endowment, Monica and Peter Tessler, and Vital Projects Fund.
Guild Hall’s Performing Arts programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Additional support provided by Friends of the Theater: Natascia Ayers, Bonnie and Joel Bergstein, Gene Bernstein and Kathy Walsh, Amy Cooney and Marty Feinman, John and Joan D’Addario, Lynn and Richard Feinson, Suzanne and John Golden, Hilarie and Mitchell Morgan, Steve and Susan Pesner and Peace, in memory of Michéle Pesner, whose entire life was devoted to all aspects of culture, Judy Roaman and Carla Chammas, The Schaffner Family Foundation, Lisa Schultz and Ezriel Kornel, Stacey and Oliver Stanton, Susi and Peter Wunsch, and Mrs. George Yates.