SWWIM: Joan Kwon Glass & Clayre Benzadón

An evening of contemporary poetry unfolds in an intimate literary setting on Miami Beach.

SWWIM: Joan Kwon Glass & Clayre Benzadón takes place Thursday, April 16 at The Betsy Writer’s Room. Part of the ongoing SWWIM Reading Series, the program is one of eight residencies presented between September 2025 and April 2026, highlighting celebrated women poets alongside Miami’s vibrant literary voices. The series fosters cross-generational dialogue and close exchange between writers, readers and the local arts community.

Joan Kwon Glass is a diasporic Korean poet and winner of the 2024 Perugia Press Poetry Prize for Daughter of Three Gone Kingdoms. She is also the author of Night Swim, recipient of the Diode Book Prize. Her work has appeared in POETRY, The Slowdown, Poetry Daily, Prairie Schooner and other national publications. She teaches and lives near New Haven, Connecticut.

Clayre Benzadón (she/they) is a queer Sephardic (Mizrahi)-Ashkenazi poet, educator and activist based in South Florida. Her chapbook Liminal Zenith was published by SurVision Books, and her manuscript Moon as Salted Lemon received an honorable mention for the Miami Book Fair’s 2025 Emerging Writer’s Fellowship and was selected as an Editor’s Pick Poetry Prize winner by Driftwood Press. Her work often explores identity, heritage and belonging through layered, lyrical language.

Presented with support from the Jorge M. Perez Family Foundation CreARTE, the SWWIM Reading Series offers audiences rare access to emerging and established poets in a setting designed for reflection, conversation and literary discovery.