We’re excited to announce our December Personal Velocity lineup: Shayne Terry, Jiordan Castle, and Lauren Holguin.

Organized by Katie Bennett, Personal Velocity is a monthly reading series featuring personal essays by women, nonbinary, and trans writers. The series will run every month from Aug '25 - Aug '26, thanks to a generous grant from Penn Treaty Special Services District.

Accessibility note: Personal Velocity is held in the basement workshop space at H&H Books, which is down a flight of stairs.

About the Authors:

Shayne Terry is the author of Leave: A Postpartum Account, out now from Autofocus Books. Her work has appeared in CRAFT, Electric Literature, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere, and her story The Rock Is Not a Rock was named a distinguished story of 2024 by Best American Short Stories. She has been selected for workshops and residencies at Bread Loaf, CRIT, Tin House, and the Vermont Studio Center. Find her at shayneterry.com.

Jiordan Castle is the author of Disappearing Act, a memoir in verse. Her poetry and prose appear in The New Yorker, The Millions, The Rumpus, and elsewhere, including the anthologies Best New Poets and What My Father and I Don’t Talk About. Originally from New York, she lives in Philadelphia with her husband and their dog.

Lauren Holguin is a writer, educator, editor, and basketball coach from Gabrieleno-Tongva land (Southern California) who calls Lenape land (Philly) home. Her image text poetry was selected for the Subnivean award in poetry by U.S. poet laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, and was nominated for Best of The Net in Art. She currently is a fiction & poetry editor at Barrelhouse mag. Her debut novel and full-length poetry collection are looking for a home.