Join us for an intimate panel discussion honoring the legacy of Hyam Plutzik (1911-62), the visionary poet whose spirit lives on in The Betsy Hotel's celebrated Writer's Room.

Three highly regarded Jewish American poets will reflect on the life and work of this midcentury master—a three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist whose powerful verse captured a pivotal moment of cultural transformation against the backdrop of the Holocaust and World War II.

A Personal Connection

This event holds special significance: The Betsy Hotel is owned by the children of Hyam Plutzik, who created The Betsy Writer's Room as a living tribute to their father and the historic 'writing rooms' that flourished in 1940s hotels.

The Writer's Room stands as both memorial and mission—honoring Plutzik's literary contributions while nurturing today's writers in a space designed for creative reflection and artistic community.

About Hyam Plutzik

Hyam Plutzik's poetry emerged during a time of profound historical rupture, giving voice to the complexities of Jewish American identity, cultural change, and the human experience during one of history's darkest chapters. His work continues to resonate with contemporary readers seeking meaning in times of transformation.

Learn more: HyamPlutzikPoetry.com

Anastasia Samoylova’s Atlantic Coast (Aperture, 2025)  retraces Berenice Abbott’s 1954 photographic journey along the Eastern Seaboard, documenting dislocation, loss, and a shifting American dream. Samoylova's work will be exhibited and discussed. 

About the Artist

Anastasia Samoylova is an American artist (b. 1984, Russia) who alternates between observational photography and studio practice. After relocating to Miami in 2016, Samoylova began developing an immersive, observational approach to photography. This led to her first monograph, FloodZone, a study of how environmental vulnerability is visualized in flood-prone communities. Her Floridas project continued this inquiry with a kaleidoscopic, often contradictory portrait of the state’s layered cultural and political identity. In Image Cities (2023), she turned outward to global metropolises, exploring the impact of media saturation on the urban landscape.

Her recent solo exhibition Floridas: Anastasia Samoylova and Walker Evans was on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from October 14, 2024, to May 11, 2025.

Dr. Deborah Willis’ Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers: 1840 to the Present (Liveright, 2025) is an acclaimed collection of Black photography, redefining our understanding of American history.  Dr. Willis will be in conversation with Cornelius Tulloch and Joan Morgan.

About the Artist

Dr. Deborah Willis is a prominent American artist, curator, and scholar, currently a University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at New York University (NYU). Her work focuses on African American photography, visual culture, and the history of Black people in America, with extensive publications and exhibitions on these subjects. Willis is also the director of NYU's Center for Black Visual Culture and has received numerous honors, including a MacArthur Fellowship. 

SWWIM Reading Series at The Betsy Writer's Room presents eight celebrated women poets in residence, September 2025-April 2026. Each visiting poet pairs with Miami's vibrant literary voices for intimate readings, fostering cross-generational dialogue and celebrating contemporary women's poetry.

This series offers audiences rare access to emerging and established poets in an intimate setting, fostering meaningful connections between writers, readers, and Miami's thriving arts community. Presented with support from the Jorge M. Perez Family Foundation CreARTE.

ABOUT THE POETS

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.

Haya Pomrenze’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Hanging Loose, Rattle, Hawaii Pacific Review, Paterson Literary Review, Lake Effect, and MiPOesias. She is the author of two poetry collections, Hook (Rock Press, 2007), a National Jewish Book Award nominee, and How It’s Done (Finishing Line Press, 2014). Haya is an occupational therapist who uses poetry as a healing tool on a psychiatric unit. She considers herself the founder of the Jewhitsu poetry form. An award-winning storyteller, Haya enjoys performing as a stand-up poet.

SWWIM Reading Series at The Betsy Writer's Room presents eight celebrated women poets in residence, September 2025-April 2026. Each visiting poet pairs with Miami's vibrant literary voices for intimate readings, fostering cross-generational dialogue and celebrating contemporary women's poetry.

This series offers audiences rare access to emerging and established poets in an intimate setting, fostering meaningful connections between writers, readers, and Miami's thriving arts community. Presented with support from the Jorge M. Perez Family Foundation CreARTE.

ABOUT THE POETS

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. 

Madison Whatley is a South Florida poet and 2023 graduate of Florida International University's MFA program, where she was the Managing Editor at Gulf Stream Magazine. Her poetry has appeared in Saw Palm, SWWIM Every Day, and Variant Lit. Her poetry manuscript Hotline Bimbo was selected as a Semifinalist for the 2023 Berkshire Prize by Tupelo Press. Find her work on madisonwhatley.com.

SWWIM Reading Series at The Betsy Writer's Room presents eight celebrated women poets in residence, September 2025-April 2026. Each visiting poet pairs with Miami's vibrant literary voices for intimate readings, fostering cross-generational dialogue and celebrating contemporary women's poetry.

This series offers audiences rare access to emerging and established poets in an intimate setting, fostering meaningful connections between writers, readers, and Miami's thriving arts community. Presented with support from the Jorge M. Perez Family Foundation CreARTE.

ABOUT THE POETS

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

Carolina Hospital’s poetry collections include Key West Nights and Other Aftershocks (Anhinga Press) and The Child of Exile: A Poetry Memoir (Arte Público Press), as well as Myth America and How to Get into Trouble (Anhinga Press), both collaborative collections with Maureen Seaton, Holly Iglesias, and Nicole Hospital-Medina; plus, the novel A Little Love, under the pen name C. C. Medina (Warner Books). She also collaborated with South Florida writers on the New York Times bestselling novel Naked Came the Manatee. Her work has appeared in publications such as the Norton Anthology of Latino Literature; Raising Lilly Ledbetter: Women Occupy the Workplace; and Rumors Secrets and Lies: Narrative Poems about Pregnancy, Abortion and Choice. Her new poetry collection All Roads Lead to Here is forthcoming in August 2025 (Redacted Books , ELJ Editions).

Cuban-American writer and educator, Nicole Hospital-Medina earned her MFA at the University of Miami where she now instructs writing. She is a poet-activist and a multi-faceted individual, serving as a voice for the neurodivergent community through her literary and artistic contributions. Her poems can be read in the anthologies, Poems from the Lockdown, Feminine Rising: Voices of Power and Invisibility, Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence, as well as in The Miami Herald, Paper Nautilus, Blunderbuss Magazine, The Acentos Review, and more. She is the inaugural winner of the Miami Herald O’Miami Haiku contest. Her paintings have been featured in Linden Lane Magazine. She released a collaborative chapbook, Myth America, working with poets, Carolina Hospital, Holly Iglesias and Maureen Seaton. The cover features one of her paintings, “In My Apartment. ” She continues to collaborate with this team, showcasing her work in their most recent collection from Anhinga Press, How to Get Into Trouble. Independently, she is celebrating the publication of the preliminary edition of her textbook, Rhetorical Innovation with AI Integration (Cognella Press).

Holly Iglesias’ work includes three books of poetry— Sleeping Things, Angles of Approach, and Souvenirs of a Shrunken World—a critical work, Boxing Inside the Box: Women’s Prose Poetry, and two collaborative chapbooks, Myth America and How to Get Into Trouble.  She has been awarded fellowships by the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Edward Albee Foundation, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She taught at the University of North Carolina-Asheville and at the University of Miami, where her favorite classes were History as an Act of the Imagination and Documentary Poetics. Her current project is Theories of Flight, an intergenerational memoir in prose fragments.

SWWIM Reading Series at The Betsy Writer's Room presents eight celebrated women poets in residence, September 2025-April 2026. Each visiting poet pairs with Miami's vibrant literary voices for intimate readings, fostering cross-generational dialogue and celebrating contemporary women's poetry.

This series offers audiences rare access to emerging and established poets in an intimate setting, fostering meaningful connections between writers, readers, and Miami's thriving arts community. Presented with support from the Jorge M. Perez Family Foundation CreARTE.

ABOUT THE POETS

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. 

Elizabeth Jacobson was the fifth Poet Laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico and an Academy of American Poets 2020 Laureate Fellow. Her third collection, There Are as Many Songs in the World as Branches of Coral  is just out from Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press. Her previous collection, Not into the Blossoms and Not into the Air, won the New Measure Poetry Prize selected by Marianne Boruch (FVE/Parlor Press, 2019), and the 2019 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for both New Mexico Poetry and Best New Mexico Book. Her other books include Her Knees Pulled In (Tres Chicas Books), two chapbooks from Dancing Girl Press, Are the Children Make Believe? and A Brown Stone, and the anthology, Everything Feels Recent When You’re Far Away, Poetry and Art from Santa Fe Youth During the Pandemic, which she co-edited. Her work has been sustained with grants and residencies by many organizations including nine consecutive grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry for her community work. She is a Reviews Editor for the on-line literary journal Terrain.org and directs the poetry programs at Santa Fe’s Center for Contemporary Arts. Elizabeth lived in Miami Beach for ten years and now spends part of each year in Lake Worth Beach.

SWWIM Reading Series at The Betsy Writer's Room presents eight celebrated women poets in residence, September 2025-April 2026. Each visiting poet pairs with Miami's vibrant literary voices for intimate readings, fostering cross-generational dialogue and celebrating contemporary women's poetry.

This series offers audiences rare access to emerging and established poets in an intimate setting, fostering meaningful connections between writers, readers, and Miami's thriving arts community. Presented with support from the Jorge M. Perez Family Foundation CreARTE.

ABOUT THE POETS

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.

Clayre Benzadón (she / they) is a queer (bi /pan) Sephardic (Mizrahi)-Ashkenazi poet, educator (adjunct professor) and activist. Her chapbook, Liminal Zenith, was published by SurVision Books in 2019. Her manuscript, Moon as Salted Lemon was recently named an honorable mention for Miami Book Fair's 2025 Emerging Writer's Fellowship and was chosen as a winner for Driftwood Press's Editor's Pick Poetry Prize. Find more about her here: https://www.clayrebenzadon.com.