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 majority queer and PoC 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 Singapore.
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 Poetry, Poetry Daily, New Ohio Review, The Yale Review and other journals.
Co-Hosts
Nancy Huang
Nancy Huang grew up in America and China. She is a VONA, Tin House, Watering Hole, and Pink Door fellow. She is the author of the poetry collection, Favorite Daughter (Write Bloody Publishing). Her poetry, plays, and prose are published by The Offing, Cosmonauts Avenue, poets.org, The Margins, and film distribution company A24. She has a poetry MFA from NYU. She sleeps in her bathtub in Brooklyn.
Jaz Sufi
Jaz is a poet and arts educator. She is a Kundiman fellow, a National Poetry Slam finalist, and the former executive director of the Berkeley Slam, the longest running poetry slam on the West Coast. Her work has been published or is upcoming in AGNI, The Rumpus, Birdfeast, The Colorado Review, Best of the Net, and elsewhere. She is currently pursuing her MFA as a Goldwater fellow at New York University, and lives in Brooklyn with her dog, Apollo.