World Poetry Salon: Luljeta Lleshanaku, Nava Dunkelman, and Patricio Ferrari

Join The New York Public Library and Limelight Poetry at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library (SNFL) for the World Poetry Salon! 

Experience words and music from around the globe at the World Poetry Salon, a new series presented in partnership with Limelight Poetry, a local nonprofit dedicated to promoting world poetry. Each event features readings by a celebrated poet set to live music by a musician of the same cultural background. 

This salon will feature a reading by Luljeta Lleshanaku accompanied by musician Nava Dunkelman. A printout will be available for attendees to follow along with Lleshanaku's poetry during the reading. Following the reading, Lleshanaku will be interviewed by event host Patricio Ferrari.

To join in person | Please be sure to register for an In-Person Ticket. Doors will open 30 minutes before the program begins.

For free events, we generally overbook to ensure a full house. Priority will be given to those who have registered in advance, but registration does not guarantee admission. If you register for multiple tickets, please provide the name of each person who will be attending the event or arrive with your entire party present. Only registered patrons will be granted entry into the event space. All registered seats are released shortly before start time, and seats may become available at that time. A standby line will form 30 minutes before the program.

To join online | On the day of the event, registrants will receive a Youtube link to join the program. To receive an email reminder shortly in advance of the event, please be sure to register! If you encounter any issues, please join us on NYPL's YouTube channel.

ABOUT LIMELIGHT POETRY

Limelight Poetry is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting world poetry, founded in 2024 in New York City. It invites outstanding poets and artists from around the world to share their work in various forms, with the goal of showcasing poetry in underrepresented languages. Drawing on the city's rich cultural resources, Limelight Poetry connects poetry with other art forms, fostering a global exchange of poetic expression. It welcomes audiences into a vibrant and inspiring world of poetry, music and beyond.

ABOUT THE POET

Luljeta Lleshanaku is a Poet Laureate of Albania (2023-2025). She belongs to the first "post-totalitarian" generation of Albanian poets. Born in 1968, she grew up under virtual house arrest because of her family's opposition to Enver Hoxha's Stalinist dictatorship. She studied Albanian Philology & Literature at the University of Tirana and later she graduated with a MFA from Warren Wilson College, USA. She was a fellow of “International Writing Program”, University of Iowa in1999 and was awarded with a fellowship as a writer from the Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (2008-2009). She worked as journalist, TV author, university lecturer and researcher.

She is the author of nine poetry collections in the Albanian language, which were critically acclaimed and awarded with national prizes such as: “PEN Albania” award, the “Tirana Book Fair” Award, KULT award, and the “Silver Pen 2000” award from the Ministry of Culture of Albania.

Her poems have been widely translated and published in collections in other languages. She won the international “Crystal Vilenica 2009” prize in Slovenia. Her last book in English Negative Space (2018) published by New Directions in USA and Bloodaxe in UK, was the winner of the "English PEN" award, a finalist for the "GRIFFIN 2019" international poetry prize in Canada and a finalist for "PEN America 2019" among other nominations. Her last book in German, Die Stadt der Äpfel (2021) was one of the books recommended by the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung, in 2022. The same year, she became the laureate of the "European Poet of Freedom" award in Gdansk, Poland.

ABOUT THE MUSICIAN

Nava Dunkelman is a percussionist and improviser based in Brooklyn, NY. Born in Tokyo, Japan and raised in a multi-cultural environment by an American father and Indonesian mother. Her musical approach is innovative and dynamic, combining virtuosity and intuition. Meticulous in an intrinsic way, she uses her distinctive sound palette to explore and give life to a vast spectrum of musical possibilities. Nava's current projects are electro-percussion experimental noise duo IMA with Amma Ateria, and percussion duo NOMON with her sister Shayna Dunkelman. She also has performed and collaborated with Angélica Negrón, Brandon Seabrook, Du Yun, ÉMU (Maria Takeuchi), Fred Frith, gabby fluke-mogul, Ikue Mori, John Zorn, Pauchi Sasaki, William Winant, yuniya edi kwon, and many others. She has performed classical and contemporary pieces with the William Winant Percussion Group, Joan Jeanrenaud, Raven Chacon, San Francisco Girls Chorus, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and others. Her work has been recognized through notable awards and residencies, including the Jerome Artist Residency (2024–2025) and Jerome Commission at Roulette (2023–2024), the Hermitage Artist Retreat (2025), Loghaven Artist Residency (2024), create Award with the American Composers Forum (2023), and the New Music USA Creator Development Fund (2022).

ABOUT THE HOST

Patricio Ferrari (polyglot poet, translator, editor) was born in Buenos Aires and left home at sixteen, when he began a lifelong journey across continents and languages. He has since shaped a multilingual poetics that explores belonging, displacement, and the in-between. In 2025, he was awarded the Fence Modern Poets Series Prize for Mud Songs, the first volume of Elsehere, a trilogy charting how each language molds and reveals a different facet of the self—what he calls heterophony, the process of self- othering through an adopted tongue.

BOOKS AND MORE

If you have an NYPL library card, you can borrow e-books related to this event on your favorite devices. Learn more: nypl.org/ebookhelp.

Don't have a New York Public Library card? Get one here!

ACCESSIBILITY

In-Person

• You can request a free ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation or CART (Communication Access Real-Time Translation) captioning service by emailing your request at least two weeks in advance of the event: email accessibility@nypl.org.


• This venue is fully accessible to wheelchairs.

Online

• Live captioning will be provided.


• You can request a free ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation by emailing your request at least two weeks in advance of the event: email accessibility@nypl.org.

CONNECT

For general questions, please email adultprogramming@nypl.org.

Please submit all press inquiries at least 48 hours before the event: email press@nypl.org.