In November, Personal Velocity will host writers Pattie McCarthy, Kaycie Hall, Katie Bennett, and Kristen Martin!

Organized by Katie Bennett, Personal Velocity is a monthly reading series featuring personal essays by women, nonbinary, and trans writers. The series runs every month from Aug '25 - Aug '26 (with a bonus reading in November!) thanks to a generous grant from Penn Treaty Special Services District.

About this month’s readers:

Kristen Martin is a writer and critic. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. She received an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University. The Sun Won’t Come Out Tomorrow: The Dark History of American Orphanhood is her first book. She lives in Philadelphia.

Katie Bennett is a writer based in Philadelphia. She's published essays in Lit Hub, Electric Literature, and Brink and received fellowships from Yaddo and Hedgebrook. Her first book, She Was Wild Grass, is out now. 

Kaycie Hall grew up in Jackson, Mississippi and now lives in New York City with her sons (a boy named Henri and a chihuahua named Walter). She is the translator of Isabelle Nicou's Stricture and the author of Disenchanted, a book of essays on disillusionment.

Pattie McCarthy is the author of eight books of poetry, including Intertidal (Apogee, 2026) and Wifthing (Apogee, 2021). She is also the author of over a dozen chapbooks, including Wyeth— (Antiphony, 2027). She is a non-tenure track professor and Associate Director of the Creative Writing MFA Program at Temple University.