Join us for an evening with Kiki Petrosino, who will read from her new book, Perfect Italian. A conversation with Hodges Adams will follow. The evening will also include a brief reading from the newly released Spanish translation of Kiki Petrosino’s previous book Bright, which will be read by the translator, Elizabeth Mirabal. This in-person event will be free and open to the public. We recommend arriving early for the best seating.
About Perfect Italian: From award-winning author Kiki Petrosino comes a poignant exploration of identity, heritage, and belonging, for readers of Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong, Slow Lightning by Eduardo C. Corral, and Seamus Heaney’s North.
Through vivid imagery and spare, precise verse, Kiki Petrosino’s Perfect Italian examines the complexities of cultural inheritance, the nuances of language, and the emotional weight of diasporic identity as a Black and Italian American. The collection weaves personal memories with ancestral echoes, reflecting on themes of family, grief, and the search for connection across generations and geographies. From the sensory experiences of travel in Italy to the tension of navigating dual identities, Petrosino’s work captures the beauty and struggle of self-discovery. Her language creates a rich tapestry of emotions and landscapes, offering a profound meditation on the intersections of race, culture, and belonging.
Perfect Italian is the third and final installment in Petrosino’s series on heritage and identity. Previous books in the collection, also published by Sarabande, include White Blood (2020) and Bright (2022).
About the Author: Kiki Petrosino is the author of several poetry collections, including Perfect Italian (2026), White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia (2020), Witch Wife (2017), Hymn for the Black Terrific (2013), and Fort Red Border (2009), as well as the memoir Bright (2022), all published by Sarabande Books. She holds graduate degrees from the University of Chicago and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is a professor of poetry at the University of Virginia, where she teaches in the MFA and undergraduate creative writing programs. Petrosino is the recipient of a DeWitt Wallace/Readers Digest fellowship from the MacDowell artist residency, a Pushcart Prize, a fellowship in creative writing from the National Endowment for the Arts, the UNT Rilke Prize, and the Spalding Prize, among other honors.
About the Moderator: Hodges Adams is a poet and bookseller residing in Charlottesville. They earned their MFA in creative writing from the University of Virginia, where they continue to teach as a lecturer in the English department. Their poems have appeared in CutBank, The Arkansas International, fourteen poems, and elsewhere. Most recently, their manuscript was a finalist for the Jake Adam York Prize from Milkweed Editions.
