About the DGN Reading Series
DGN is a rowdy, community focused monthly poetry reading series in Brooklyn, NY.
DGN was started in 2022 when writer and chef extraordinarie Maria Fuentes approached poets (and longtime Branded Saloon regulars) Janelle Tan and Robert Wood Lynn about hosting a reading series at the bar—the bar gave us one rule (don’t get naked) and the reading series was born. Every month the reading series looks to showcase a mix of emerging and established poets while maintaining a diverse lineup true to the community we’re in.
Co-Founders
Janelle Tan
Janelle is queer Singaporean poet. She is the winner of the 2022 J. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood Prize from the Poetry Foundation. Her poems appear in The Atlantic, Poetry, Gulf Coast, Michigan Quarterly Review, Split Lip, and elsewhere. She lives in London.
Robert Wood Lynn
Robert is a writer from Virginia and the author of the poetry collection Mothman Apologia (Yale University Press) and the chapbook How to Maintain Eye Contact (Button Poetry). He is the winner of the 2021 Yale Younger Poets Prize and the 2023 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. A 2023 NEA Creative Writing Fellow, his work has been featured in American Poetry Review, The Atlantic, Poetry, Poetry Daily, The Drift and other journals. He teaches poetry at Juilliard.
Co-Hosts
Ellie Stimpson
Ellie Stimpson is a writer and dancer living in Brooklyn, and a graduate of NYU’s MFA program in poetry.
Lisa Hiton
Lisa is a poet and filmmaker living in Brooklyn. Her first book of poems, Afterfeast, was selected by Mary Jo Bang to win the Dorset Prize and is available from Tupelo Press. She is the author of the chapbooks The Clearing (Black Lawrence Press) and Variation on Testimony (CutBank Literary). Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in the Kenyon Review, Linebreak, New South, NPR, and elsewhere. She is the Founder and Producer of Queer Poem-a-Day on the Deerfield Public Library Podcast.