Calendar of Events

Poetry in the Garden: Mark Doty and Trace Peterson

Declarations 2025 - LGBTQ+ Voices

July 21, 2025 · 7 p.m.
Walled Garden
Free

Commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence with "Poetry in the Garden: Declarations 2025." Each Monday evening in July, nationally acclaimed poets will share works that explore how historically marginalized groups have been denied the Declaration of Independence's promise of equality and inalienable rights.

On July 21, we are proud to host two poets whose work explores the marginalization, expression, and resilience of LGBTQ+ Americans: Mark Doty—a National Book Award winner—and award-winning poet Trace Peterson. The winners of a poetry contest co-sponsored by Ridgefield PRIDE will also be presented. A Q&A session and book signing will follow.

Free for all! Bring a lawn chair or blanket to enjoy the readings, held in KTM&HC’s beautiful walled garden. A Q&A session will follow each reading; poets’ books will be available for signing. In the event of inclement weather, the reading will move inside the Garden House.

Mark Doty is the author of nine books of poetry, including Deep Lane, Fire to Fire: New & Selected Poems—winner of the 2008 National Book Award—and My Alexandria, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the T.S. Eliot Prize. The author of four best-selling memoirs, Doty has received two NEA fellowships, Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships, a Lila Wallace/Readers Digest Award, and the Witter Byner Prize. He has taught at the University of Iowa, Princeton University, Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia University, Cornell, and NYU. In 2011, Doty was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Trace Peterson's new collection The Valleys Are So Lush and Steep won the 2024 Alma Book Award from Saturnalia Books and is forthcoming this fall. Her first book, Since I Moved In, won the Gil Ott Award. Peterson co-edited the first-ever anthology of trans poetry Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, a Finalist for a Lamda Literary Award. She is also editor of the small press EOAGH, winner of two Lamda Literary Awards and a National Jewish Book Award. Currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at UConn, Peterson has also taught at Yale, Emory, Hunter College, and the Jack Kerouac School at Naropa.

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