Sunday Salon returns on March 22 with five writers mapping the distances between us — across oceans and generations, grief and faith, what parents pass down and what children make of it. Nadia Alexis, Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond, Melanie Faranello, Vikas K. Menon, and R. A. Villanueva bring luminous poetry and prose that reaches toward connection even at the breaking point. DJ DubSix keeps the grooves going. 5pm. Von Bar, 3 Bleecker St.
Nadia Alexis is a poet, writer, and photographer born in Harlem to Haitian immigrants. She is the author of the hybrid debut collection Beyond the Watershed, which was longlisted for the 2025 Maya Angelou Book Award and finalist for the 2022 Ghost Peach Press Prize. She’s one of Poets & Writers’ 2026 Ten Best Debut Poets. She has earned honors, including the Haitian Creatives Digital Awards’ Poet of the Year. Her photography has been exhibited internationally and virtually. A fellow of the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop and The Watering Hole, she holds a PhD and MFA from the University of Mississippi.
Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond is a Ghanaian-American author and editor of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry for children, teens, and adults. Her works for young people include the Young Adult novel Powder Necklace and the children’s picture book Blue: A History of the Color as Deep as the Sea and as Wide as the Sky. For adults, she edited Relations: An Anthology of African and Diaspora Voices and wrote My Parents’ Marriage: A Novel. Learn more at nanabrewhammond.com.
Melanie Faranello is the author of the story collection, Everybody Needs Something, which won the 2025 Donald L Jordan Prize for Literary Excellence and is forthcoming in March. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Swamp Pink, Electric Literature, Hippocampus, StoryQuarterly, Blackbird, HuffPost Personal, Catamaran, Vol 1 Brooklyn, Vestal Review, and elsewhere, and have been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize. Her novel-in-progress won an Emerging Writer Award from Key West Literary Seminars. She holds her MFA from The New School. Originally from Chicago, she lives in West Hartford, CT and is the founder of the community engagement project, Poetry on the Streets. Read more at www.melaniefaranello.com
Vikas K. Menon is a poet, playwright, and songwriter. His debut book of poems, Raga for the Fallen, is forthcoming from Copper Coin press. His poems have been featured in numerous publications, including the Chicago Quarterly Review and Cortland Review, and anthologies such as The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry. He was a co-writer with Ram Devineni on the first of an innovative series of augmented reality comic books, Priya’s Shakti (www.priyashakti.com), and co-creator of the character Priya. He also co-wrote Feathers of Fire with Hamid Rahmanian (http://www.kingorama.com/feathersoffire/), which had its world premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2016 and went on to tour 23 U.S. cities and 6 countries. He received his M.F.A (Poetry) from Brooklyn College and his M.A. in Literature from St. Louis University.
R.A. Villanueva is the author of two award-winning collections of poetry: A Holy Dread (Alice James Books, 2026), and Reliquaria (U. of Nebraska Press, 2014). New work has been featured by the Academy of American Poets and National Public Radio—and his writing appears widely in international publications such as Poetry London and The Poetry Review. His honors include commendations from the Forward Prizes, and fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. He lives in Brooklyn.