
Charu Suri
CHARU SURI is a highly regarded pianist and composer who treads fearlessly between genres, blending several styles and fusing Indian ragas with more traditional jazz. Born in South India, she was a piano prodigy performing in various concert halls at an early age. Charu's most recent album, RAGS & RAGAS, was recorded with John Patitucci on the double bass, Steve Gadd and Joe Lastie on the drums, and debuted recently at #3 on the iTunes jazz charts, and reached #2 in Kenya. Her previous albums charted #1 in India in both the jazz and overall albums charts. With mood-invoking ragas (to be played according to the time of day) for many of her compositions, she weaves techniques and sounds from several places including India, Europe, and Africa. Presented as part of The Betsy Jazz Series with support from Jorge Perez Family Foundation creARTE.


Joonas Haavisto
Joonas Haavisto
Musician
Joonas Haavisto is one of the most notable jazz musicians from the Nordic jazz scene. He has played as a soloist with chamber orchestras and big bands and leads his group Joonas Haavisto Trio, which released its fifth album Offshore in 2019. The trio has performed worldwide in venues like Blue Note Jazz Club New York, Tokyo Jazz Festival, DC Jazz Festival, Rochester International Jazz Festival, Nottingham Royal Concert Hall, Jazzahead!, Les Boréales Festival and Pori Jazz Festival. In 2017, Joonas joined the world-famous Steinway Artist roster.
In his compositions, Haavisto combines memorable themes with multilayered, surprising rhythmic motifs and sophisticated harmonies. Joonas tells about the latest album: " If someone asked me, where is my home I ́d answer it is by the sea. This album (Offshore) is about the opportunity, infinity, safety, connection, enormous power and calmness which are delivered to us by the sea." Joonas has also composed music for various groups from the trio to big bands. In 2016 he composed and played the piano music for The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki movie, which won the Un Certain Regard Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Rebecca Wolf
Rebecca Wolf
Writer
Rebecca Wolf is a former journalist whose fiction and essays have appeared in many publications, including Apricity and Tablet. She is a volunteer writing tutor for PEN, America’s Prison Writing Program, and she lived in Jerusalem as a foreign student before attending Barnard College. She lives in New Jersey with her family. Presented in partnership with Miami Beach JCC and Jewish Book Council.

Taylor Byas
Dr. Taylor Byas, Ph.D. (she/her) is a Black Chicago native who lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she is a Features Editor for The Rumpus, a Poetry Acquisitions Editor for Variant Literature, an Editorial Board Member for Beloit Poetry Journal, and an Editorial Advisor for Jackleg Press. She is the author of two chapbooks, her debut full-length, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times, from Soft Skull Press, which won the 2023 Maya Angelou Book Award, the 2023 Chicago Review of Books Award in Poetry, and the 2024 Ohio Book Award for Poetry, and Resting Bitch Face, forthcoming in August 2025. She is also a co-editor of The Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol X: Alabama from Texas Review Press, and of Poemhood: Our Black Revival, a YA anthology on Black folklore from HarperCollins.

Marc Irwin
Marc Irwin
Pianist
CreARTe Jazz Artist in Residence at The Betsy.
MARC IRWIN – Piano – As a pianist, composer, arranger, and recording artist, Dr. Marc Irwin uses his diverse talents as a musician within the fields of contemporary, jazz, classical, theater, and world music. He often plays with his signature quartet comprised of some of the busiest and most sought-after musicians in the industry. He has spent decades on the New York scene as a performer, accompanist, and musical director. Marc’s doctorate in Music Composition is from the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University.

DeSean Kirkland
DeSean Kirkland
Musician
DeSean Kirkland is an American musician, known primarily as a pianist, vocalist, and bandleader. He is also a film producer and philanthropist. Kirkland's music style blends jazz, soul, and pop, often drawing comparisons to artists like Billy Joel, Elton John, James Brown, and Marvin Gaye. He has performed extensively throughout Florida and beyond, including residencies and special events. Presented as part of The Betsy Jazz Series with support from the Jorge Perez Family Foundation creARTE.

Carmen Tomassetti
Carmen Tomassetti
Musician
Carmen Tomassetti is a dynamic force in the world of live entertainment—an accomplished musician, bandleader, and entertainment producer whose career spans over 30 years and countless stages. From the glimmering decks of cruise ships to the lively bars of New Jersey’s coastlines and the breezy venues of both East and West Florida, Carmen has brought his unique musical energy and seasoned versatility to audiences far and wide.

Lesley Wheeler
Lesley Wheeler, Poetry Editor of Shenandoah, is the author of Mycocosmic, runner-up for the Dorset Prize and her sixth poetry collection. Her other books include the hybrid memoir Poetry’s Possible Worlds and the novel Unbecoming. Wheeler’s work has received support from the Fulbright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Workshop, and the Sewanee Writers Workshop; her poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, Poets & Writers, Kenyon Review Online, Ecotone, Guernica, Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere.

Rita Mookerjee
Rita Mookerjee is an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Worcester State University. She holds a PhD in Literature from Florida State University. Her research has been funded by the Fulbright Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is the winner of the 2023 Steel Toe Books Poetry Award and the author of False Offering (JackLeg Press). A co-founder of Honey Literary, she serves as the Poetry Editor of Split Lip Magazine and the Vice President of the Board of Directors at Sundress Publications. Her poems can be found in CALYX, Copper Nickel, Passages North, Poet Lore, and The Offing.

Nancy Speilberg
Nancy Speilberg
Filmmaker
Nancy Spielberg is a writer and producer. She produced documentary feature Above and Beyond in 2014 and is developing it as a narrative feature film with a studio. Spielberg is executive-producing Who Will Write Our History (2017), with director Roberta Grossman, and executive-produced On The Map (2016) with director Dani Menkin. She served as consultant on the Oscar-winning documentary Chernobyl Heart. She executive-produced Elusive Justice: The Search for Nazi War Criminals, which aired nationally on PBS as well as Mimi and Dona, which was chosen as one of the best TV shows of 2015 by the New York Times. Before creating and producing Above and Beyond, Spielberg produced a project for the Israeli government, Celebrities Salute Israel's 60th, which was featured in Times Square on the NASDAQ screens for one month. Presented in partnership with Miami Jewish Film Festival.

Allison Blevins
Allison Blevins (she/her) is a queer disabled writer and the author of Where Will We live if the House Burns Down?, Cataloguing Pain, Handbook for the Newly Disabled: A Lyric Memoir, Slowly/Suddenly, and five chapbooks. Her sixth chapbook is forthcoming. Winner of the 2023 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award from Persea Books and the 2022 Laux/Millar Poetry Prize from Raleigh Review, Allison serves as the Publisher of Small Harbor Publishing. She lives in Minnesota with her spouse and three children. allisonblevins.com

Sunni Brown Wilkinson
Sunni Brown Wilkinson is the author of Rodeo (winner of the 2024 Donald Justice Poetry Prize, selected by Patricia Smith and forthcoming from Autumn House Press), The Marriage of the Moon and the Field (Black Lawrence Press) as well as the chapbook The Ache & The Wing (winner of the Sundress Chapbook Prize). Her poetry has been awarded the New Ohio Review 's NORward Poetry Prize, the Joy Harjo Prize, the Sherwin Howard Award, and the Association for Mormon Letters Poetry Award. She holds an MFA from Eastern Washington University and teaches at Weber State University. Born and raised in Logan, UT, she now lives in Pleasant View, UT, with her husband and three sons.

Joan Kwon Glass
Joan Kwon Glass is a diasporic Korean poet, winner of the 2024 Perugia Press Poetry Prize for her book Daughter of Three Gone Kingdoms & Night Swim, winner of the Diode Book Prize. Joan’s poems have been featured or are forthcoming in POETRY, The Slowdown, Passages North, Poetry Daily, Terrain, Ninth Letter, Rattle, AAWW (The Margins), Poetry Northwest, Tahoma Literary Review, Prairie Schooner & elsewhere. She teaches & lives near New Haven, CT.

Yaakov Katz
Yaakov Katz
Writer
Yaakov Katz is the former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post. He writes for Newsweek and The Jewish Chronicle, hosts the JPPI weekly podcast and has appeared on CNN and BBC. He is the author of Shadow Strike and the co-author with Amir Bohbot of Weapon Wizards. Presented in partnership with Miami Beach JCC and Jewish Book Council.

Lisa Rhoades
Lisa Rhoades
Poet
Lisa Rhoades is the author of three collections of poetry, The Long Grass, (Saint Julian Press), Strange Gravity, (Bright Hill Press) and the forthcoming Central to the Task. A former poetry fellow at the Creative Writing Institute at the University of Wisconsin, she holds MFAs in writing from Columbia University and LSU. Her poems recently have appeared or are forthcoming widely, including at Rust+Moth, Rogue Agent, Pirene’s Fountain, Permafrost, Windhover, Barrow Street, and The Southern Review. She currently works as a pediatric nurse in New York City where she lives with her spouse and their children.

The Call of Hospitality: Exile, Storytelling and the Healing Promise of Narrative Medicine
Wednesday, October 8, 2025 | 7:00 PM
Faculty Club, Florida International University (MMC)
Presented by FIU's Exile Studies Program in collaboration with The Betsy-South Beach Hotel


























