Patricia Carragon is known throughout New York City, as an energetic and indefatigable writer/poet/curator who runs the long-running and popular Brownstone Poets Reading Series (since 2005), formally in Brooklyn Heights, New York, now on Zoom, promoting poetry nationally and internationally. She is also an emerging photographer. She was one of the hosts for the SOS ABC NO RIO Sunday Open Series on the Lower East Side and a former executive editor for Home Planet News Online.
Ms. Carragon has been widely published in journals (both online and in print) and anthologies, including A Gathering of the Tribes, Alien Buddha Press, Arriving at a Shoreline Anthology (great weather for MEDIA, 2022), The Avocet, a Journal of Nature Poetry, Bear Creek Haiku, Beat Generation Anthology 2022, The Café Review, Clockwise Cat Re-Meow (2022), Danse Macabre, Dreams In Hiding: An amalgamation of verses and prose, (November 2022), First Literary Review-East, great weather for MEDIA, Indolent Books, Jerry Jazz Musician, I Wanna Be Loved by You: Poems on Marilyn Monroe (Milk & Cake Press, 2022), Krytyka Literacka, Live Mag!, Maintenant, The Mom Egg, Moonstone Press, Muddy River Poetry Review, Narrative Northeast, Nat’l and Int’l Goddess, NBPF 2023 Festival Anthology, Nixes Mate Review, Orbis, Out Loud, an LGBTQA Literary Arts Anthology (Red or Green Books, 2022), Panoplyzine, The Paterson Review, Poetrybay, The Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow, The Scene Magazine, June 2023, Sensitive Skin, When Women Speak Poetry Anthology, Vol. 1, (2022), Witchery, Issue 3, Summer 2023, et al. She is also an avid performer of her work virtually and in various venues throughout NYC and its environs.
Publications of her books include her first book of fiction, The Cupcake Chronicles (Poets Wear Prada, 2017) and a haiku/photography chapbook on cats, Meowku (Poets Wear Prada 2019). Other books of poetry include Innocence (Finishing Line Press 2017), Urban Haiku and More (Fierce Grace Press, 2010), and Journey to the Center of My Mind (Rogue Scholars Press, 2005). Her debut novel is Angel Fire, (Alien Buddha Press, 2020). She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Prizes, Honors, Grants:
Finalist for the 2016 Long Island Light Poetry Competition.Nominated for a 2018
Pushcart Prize for Fiction: “Saturday After Midnight, August 5, 2023” from The Cupcake Chronicles.Won
Poem of the Week from great weather for MEDIA: “Paris the Beautiful, April 19, 2020. Nominated for Sundress Publications Annual Best of the Net 2020 for Fiction: “What Has to Happen Next.”
Nominated for a 2021 Pushcart Prize for Poetry: “faucet waterfall” from Bear Creek Haiku
Received a grant from Poets & Writers for performance at Fort Greene Poetry Festival, Brooklyn, NY on April 16, 2022
Patricia has featured at numerous venues including A Persistence of Cormorants, Bright Hill Press, Unnamable Books, The Artful Dodger, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, the Telephone Bar, KGB Bar, the Galapagos Art Space, The Huntington Poetry Barn (Huntington, NY), The Colony Arts Center (Woodstock, NY), Robin’s Bookstore (Philadelphia, PA), Poets and Angels Reading Series (East Brunswick, NJ), The Carrozini von Buhler Gallery, the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center, The Cornelia Street Cafe, the Phoenix Reading Series, the Bowery Poetry Club, A Gathering of the Tribes, Bluestockings Bookstore, the Saturn Series, the Moroccan Star, Stark!!! and the Back Fence.
In 2006, Christine Leahy from the Park Slope Reader interviewed her. In 2008, she was interviewed by Louis Reyes Rivera on WBAI's Perspective on September 3 with Juanita Torrence-Thompson and Vivian Warfield. Patricia and several of her "Brownstoners" (Evie Ivy, Linda Lerner, Obsidian, Richard Fein and Peter Chelnik accompanied by saxiphonist Bob Feldman) were interviewed on Anne Cammon Fiero's Studio A Radio Series - WKCR 89.9 FM - Columbia University, which aired on December 13, 2009. Patricia was part of David Morneau's Love Songs CD in 2013, along with Austin Alexis, Iris Berman,Ana Bozicevic, Anne Fiero, George Held, Cindy Hochman, Roxanne Hoffman, Evie Ivy, and Susan Maurer. In 2013, she was one of the 3 muses in David Francis' indie flick, Village Folksinger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njU2DWEEu5I. Christal Cooper interviewed her for #300 Backstory of the Poem: Patricia Carragon’s “At Last” July, 10, 2021. She of A Beautiful Mind, "One On Poetry" interview by William Washington, January 18, 2021 on Instagram. Jools Voice Over recited from The Cupcake Chronicles on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joxUD00anjw&t=13s.
For Patricia, poetry allows the imagination to guide the hand in writing down the voice from within. Poetry is a safe flight into her darkest moments and other forbidden territories with her at the controls. By using words on paper, they become puppets. Through these puppets, she can express any deep-rooted fear or desire without submitting herself to embarrassing conversation. She prefers to get things down on paper as a catharsis for the soul. These emotions and ideas, whether they are dark or light are beautified and the afterimages that they produce are rewarding and uplifting. Please share her experience and take a journey to where the intelligence of the heart can contemplate the complexities of the mind.
