Register 50 Seats Remaining

Kari Gunter-Seymour Author Visit

All That Teethes Within Book Release with Fred Andrle

Kari Gunter-Seymour, past Poet Laureate of Ohio, visits the Bexley Public Library to celebrate the release of her latest poetry collection, All That Teethes Within.

Join Kari Gunter-Seymour, past Poet Laureate of Ohio, at the Bexley Public Library as we celebrate the release of her latest poetry collection, All That Teethes Within. Gunter-Seymour's latest collection of poems reckons with the incomprehensible reality of a sibling's suicide, serving as a guide for survival and a call to speak the truth of our anguish and our rapture. Gunter-Seymour will be in conversation with Fred Andrle for a discussion on processing profound grief through writing, being in community with others, and appreciating the beauty of nature and Appalachian landscape. 

About the Author:

Kari Gunter-Seymour is the immediate past Poet Laureate of Ohio and an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship recipient. Her poetry collections include Dirt Songs (EastOver Press, 2024) winner of the 2025 Bronze IPPY Award for Poetry, 2025 NYC Big Book Award, 2025 Feathered Quill Award, 2025 National Federation of Press Women Award, 2024 POTY Author of the Year Award and STORYTRADE Award; Alone in the House of My Heart (Ohio University Swallow Press, 2022), winner of the 2024 Legacy Award, the 2023 Best Book Award, and finalist for the 2023 National Indie Excellence Award; and A Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen (Sheila Na Gig Editions, 2020), winner of the 2020 Ohio Poet of the Year Award. A ninth generation Appalachian, she is the executive director of the Women of Appalachia Project and editor of its anthology series, Women Speak. Gunter-Seymour holds writing workshops for incarcerated adults and women in recovery, is a retired instructor in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University and the founder, curator, and host of "Spoken & Heard," a seasonal performance series featuring poets, writers, and musicians from across the country. She is the editor of I Thought I Heard A Cardinal Sing: Ohio’s Appalachian Voices, funded through the Academy of American Poets and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She was selected to serve as a 2022 Dodge Poetry Festival Poet and is a Pillars of Prosperity Fellow for the Foundation for Appalachian Ohio. Her work has been featured in The New York Times,  World Literature Today, American Book Review, Poem-a-Day, and Katie Curic's Wake Up Call.

About the Book:

In All That Teethes Within, poet Kari Gunter-Seymour translates the poignant complexity of loss into words. This exploration of heartache is layered with the poet's Appalachian identity and overflows with sadness and anger toward the forces that cause societal and environmental damage in the region. The poems mourn a loved one's sudden passing, opportunity missed due to poverty or gender inequality, and the piece of one's identity that vanishes or fades with age.

Gunter-Seymour's interrogation of grief and destruction quietly weaves in elements of nature—"Breezes whistle like wisps of memory / inside clusters of hemlock"—to counter profound pain. Small joys found in friendship, the land, grandchildren, and wildlife round out this collection. All That Teethes Within reckons with the incomprehensible reality of a sibling's suicide, serving as a guide for survival and a call to speak the truth of our anguish and our rapture.

If you would like to receive an email reminder about this event, please register. Join us in person, or live stream this program on BPL's YouTube channel.

Upcoming events