Revel in an evening of dancing, music, poetry, and masquerade ... all to support the important work of the Poetry Society of New York!

Terrance Hayes • Deborah Landau • Timothy DonnellyDandy (@dandyandfriends) • Hot Club of Flatbush• Charcuterie and hors d'oeuvres included• Open bar / free drinks all night • Secret auction • Raffle!

To all poets, poetry lovers, and poets-to-be: look no further for your dream spooky season soiree! Join The Poetry Society of New York for our first ever Masquerade Spectacular on October 28th, from 8:00-11:00pm at the historic Strand’s Rare Book Room!

This Halloweekend extravaganza will be the platonic ideal of a New York evening, complete with live jazz, literary legends, and cold champagne. This iconic landmark-in-the-making is a fundraiser to support The Poetry Society of New York, a 501(c)3 non-profit, in its mission to make poetry—and the arts as a whole—accessible. If you haunt our Halloween spectacular, you will certainly have a night to remember while simultaneously supporting the arts! What can we say: we put the fun in fundraising!

Hosted by the uproarious Dandy (@dandyandfriends), the ball will commence with an 8:00pm VIP entrance (open to those with VIP tickets and to Sestina and Epic PSNY members). Until GA admission opens at 8:30pm, VIPs will mingle to the musical stylings of Hot Club of Flatbush and pick up their signed copies of Seymour Licht’s Halloween Underground, all while talking rhythm and rhyme at our open bar with critically-acclaimed poets Terrance Hayes (National Book Award Winner), Deborah Landau (The Believer Book Award Winner), and Timothy Donnelly (Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award Winner).

Fancy, glamorous, Gatsby-esque attire—including masks, of course—is encouraged, as what would a Halloweekend masquerade ball be without costumes? Now you finally have the excuse you’ve been looking for to wear that swanky sequined dress that’s been living in the back of your closet!

If you don’t have your own mask, have no fear: our brilliant face painters can compose one straight out of your dreams! If the spirits between the spines of The Strand’s Rare Book Room plant in you a desire to see beyond this astral plane, you can seek the assistance of one of our on-site Tarot readers. If being in such a historic space inspires you to reveal your truths behind your everyday mask, you can engage in intimacy with one of our poets for a private one-on-one poetry reading or a personalized typewriter poem. For VIP ticket-holders, all of these offerings are complimentary!

To fund PSNY’s accessible programming as much as possible, our ball will feature a secret auction (like a silent auction but with more secrets) and a $10-a-ticket raffle. Available winnings include everything from VIP Sleep No More and National Sawdust tickets to stays in sunny Arizona and magnum champagne bottles to tours of The Metropolitan Museum of Art with leading arts experts. Like the antiques in The Strand’s Rare Book Room, our auction lots—including an on-the-spot exquisite corpse by our headliners—are as one-of-a-kind as a gilded subway rat.

The Poetry Society of New York believes poetry should be for everyone. As such, PSNY is dedicated to decreasing financial barriers to experiencing poetry. This is why so many of our programs, like the NYC Poetry Festival, our Poetry Salons, There's a Lot to Unpack Here, and Free Verse: a BIPOC workshop series are completely free, while many of our other programs from The Poetry Brothel to the Summer Workshop Intensive to Poetry Camp offer sliding scale tickets and scholarships. We can't do this vital work without you. With your help, we can bring poetry to more people than ever before.

PSNY also believes poetry should be fun! Poetry has so often been painted as a dry discourse that took place centuries ago by old men spilling ink in expensive books in a language hardly anyone can understand. We know poetry doesn't have to be that way; poetry can be joyful and playful, silly and witty, moving and mourning, a salve, a balm, a broken window through which you can glimpse the night sky. Darlings and lovelies, we want you to join us for an entertaining evening of the utmost merrymaking!

If you moved to NYC with a pen in your back pocket, a tattered Frank O’Hara anthology, and a dream, we guarantee that this night will be everything you imagined New York’s literary landscape could be. Don your persona for the evening and toast to the arts with New York’s most bewitching bards.