Jimson Weed Coffee Night Welcomes Poet Caryl Pagel
Acclaimed poet Caryl Pagel will read from her work at Coffee Night on April 15th at 6:30 p.m. in the Chapel of all Faiths at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise (UVA Wise). Coffee Night celebrates the annual publication of Jimson Weed, a journal of poetry, prose, drama, art and photography. Jimson Weed includes creative work from students, faculty, the local community, and writers from the United States and beyond.
"It is an honor to host the Coffee Night event for Jimson Weed with our featured guest, the talented Caryl Pagel. Celebrating the creative voices of faculty, students and the campus community is a tradition dating back half a century. Being able to continue this tradition is an important testament to the unity of the Appalachian community. Jimson Weed's Coffee Night event is open to everyone," says Aden Foster, Managing Editor for Jimson Weed.
Pagel is the author of Free Clean Fill Dirt, Twice Told, Experiments I Should Like Tried at My Own Death, as well as a collection of essays, Out of Nowhere into Nothing. Pagel’s writing has appeared in AGNI, Brick, Conduit, echo verse, The Iowa Review, The Mississippi Review, New American Writing, and The Paris Review, among other journals. She is the recipient of grants and residencies from the Headlands Center for the Arts, The Hermitage Artist Retreat and the Ohio Arts Council.
Pagel was born in Waterloo, Iowa and grew up in southeast Wisconsin and the Chicagoland area. She holds a BA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and MFAs from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has taught creative writing, literature, composition and humanities courses at The University of Iowa, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Carthage College, Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and Columbia College Chicago.
Pagel is an associate professor at Cleveland State University, where she teaches poetry and nonfiction in the NEOMFA program. She is a publisher and editor at Rescue Press and the director of the Cleveland State University Poetry Center. Pagel is the recipient of the 2025 Lorine Niedecker Fellowship.