An Afternoon with Hollis Kurman: book presentation Unlikely Skylight

Join us to celebrate the launch of Hollis Kurman's debut poetry collection, Unlikely Skylight. Hollis will be reading from her work, talk about her writing and sign her book.Hollis Kurman crafts a luminous and unflinching exploration of memory, identity, and resilience, threading intimate domestic scenes with global currents of displacement and justice.Her poems are as layered in their construction as they are in their feeling, often folding mythology and the quotidian into the same tender breath. Unlikely Skylight moves across landscapes both personal and geopolitical, from Amsterdam's Herengracht canal to Long Island's East End, and from urban art galleries to the poet's ancestral homelands.Whether she's examining the repercussions of war, migration, and personal history, or the joys of art and dance, there are few sociopolitical or cultural spaces that are not transformed by Kurman's nimble craft and daring empathy. Her writing crosses borders and invites us to take a fresh and undaunted look at rites of passage, peril, and survival, always revealing "the surmise of light under doors." Elegant and visceral in equal measure, this much anticipated debut collection conjures gifts where they are hardest to find.

Hollis Kurman was born in New York City and educated at the University of Pennsylvania and the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. She serves on the Human Rights Watch Global Advisory Council for Women's Rights and the Fulbright Commission NL Board. She is Chairperson of the Ivy Circle, has served on the Board of Trustees of Save the Children Netherlands, and moderates literary and academic events.Kurman is also the author of two internationally acclaimed children's books, Hello! A Counting Book of Kindnesses and Counting in Green: 10 Little Ways to Help Our Big Planet. She lives with her husband in Amsterdam.

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